Importing a CTF

Now that you have the right page to view and manage CTF imports, you can move on to uploading your file. Uploading your file adds the CTF to Arbor, but does not yet make any changes to or add a new student record. Uploads that have not yet been imported can be deleted in case of a mistake.

To upload your file from the School > Data > Import > CTF Import page:

• Click +Add in the top right corner of the CTF Imports table to open a slide over
• Click Browse next to the CTF file box
• Find your CTF file and click Open

• If the CTF you're importing contains new students, use the Default intake season dropdown to select an intake season. If the file doesn't contain new students, you can leave the box blank.

  Setting an Intake Season allows you to import your new students as Applicants, so that their (future) enrolments can be managed centrally. More on this here: Applicants and admissions - Adding, enrolling and sending communications

• Once you're happy with your selections, click the green Upload CTF button

Once you have uploaded your CTF to Arbor, you're taken to the CTF's Import Overview. The Overview page shows you which student records are included in the CTF, which students have already been imported and what the import status of your CTF is. 

CTFs that have not yet been imported have the status Awaiting Import, CTFs where some but not all students have been imported have the status Some students imported, and fully imported CTFs are marked as All students imported successfully.

There are two ways to customise which fields of the below sections in your CTF will be included in your import, on a per-student basis and in bulk:

• Name
• Date of Birth
• Languages
• Disabilities
• Address
• Student Email Address
• Guardians
• SEN
• Attendance
• Assessments
• School history
• Looked after
• FSM

Bulk setting import sections

To set which fields will be imported in bulk (i.e. for every student):

• Click the Bulk Set Import Sections button on the top-right side of the page.
• Untick sections you wish to exclude and leave sections you want to include ticked (by default, all sections will be ticked, even if you previously set different choices)
• Click the green Set Import Sections button to confirm your import

Even if you intend to import as much data about a student as possible, there might be situations where you still want to exclude some sections for all students. For example, you may choose not to import student email addresses to prevent students from having the same email address as their parents.

Top Tip: This page won't tell you all the fields being imported (including what the ULNs are for each student), but you can see more details of what's included in a CTF here: What is included in a CTF?

Setting import sections per student

If you click an individual student's name in the Students section of the page, you can also choose which ones to update on an individual basis. 

We recommend doing this only after you have set your bulk import sections. This is because setting import sections in bulk overwrites any sections set for individuals. In other words, use the Bulk option to set your general choices as they apply to all students, and then make tweaks on an individual basis.

To edit the import sections for an individual:

• Select the student
• Click on the Select Import Sections arrow on the slide over to expand the list of sections (just above the green Import now button)
• Hover over the question mark icon next to one of the tick boxes to see which data you already store for the student, which data the CTF contains and what Arbor will do with the information from the CTF if imported.

• Untick the boxes next to the information you don’t want to import for this specific student
• Click the Save and import later button to confirm your choices

Now that you have made sure only the data you want from your CTF upload will be imported, you will need to make sure the data in your CTF file applies to the correct students, or results in the creation of new students where needed.

Arbor automatically matches student data in your CTF using the UPN from the CTF and the UPN on their profile.

If Arbor can’t match a student in the CTF (if one of them doesn’t have a UPN, for example, or if they have an incorrect UPN on Arbor or in the CTF), we will, by default, create a new student profile when importing the student rather than updating an existing student.

Therefore, to prevent duplicates, you must match the CTF to an existing student profile manually before you complete your import if you are sure the student in question has an existing profile. More on this here too: Prevent duplicate profiles when importing a CTF

Any students in the CTF that have been matched to an existing Arbor profile are marked with (update existing Student: [student name]).

Any students who have not been matched have (CREATE NEW STUDENT) in orange next to their name.

For students who are marked as existing, clicking on their name will let you double-check the student's Name, UPN and date of birth in Arbor and the CTF match. 

If no match exists and the student is marked as (CREATE NEW STUDENT), clicking on the student opens a slide over where you can manually match students to a record in Arbor.

Leave the Select update student dropdown empty if you wish to create a new student. And, if you want to update an existing student record in Arbor, use the dropdown to find and select that student. Any students who are a likely match based on date of birth and name appear at the top of the dropdown list.

Once you have selected a student to update, the Selected student details section provides further information on which sections of the student's record match. This should help you make sure that you are updating the right student.

Step 4 - Importing your CTF

Now that you have matched your students to the correct records and let Arbor know which data for those students you want to update or create, it is time to import your CTF.

Please note: This step is not reversible; once you import a student, any changes to profiles are applied immediately and are only reversible by editing the student's profile. Additionally, once you have imported a student from your CTF file, you will no longer be able to use the red Delete CTF button on the right to remove your CTF upload from Arbor.

To import all of the students in your CTF in one go, use the green Update / Import All Students button in the top right corner. Then click OK to confirm the upload.

The update/import process for students in the CTF may take some time, depending on the number of students. This occurs in the background, so you won't see the changes right away. Once the import is complete, you will see a notification (the bell icon on the left-hand side of Arbor) appear. You may need to refresh the page to see the notification.

To import individual students/only some students, click on the student(s) you want to import and click Import now on the slide-over. Repeat this until you have imported all of the students you wish to import.

You can check if a student's details have been imported by looking for a green tick next to their name. This means the upload has been successful. You won't receive a notification for individual import.

Importing only certain students

If you only want to import CTF data for some of the students included in the CTF, you won't be able to use the bulk button. You'll need to click into each student you want to import data for.

If you have a lot of students, you may find it easier to bulk import the students, then delete the profiles for the ones who won't be joining your school. Please note that this would only apply to new students, not data imported for existing students.

If you have accidentally created duplicate students by not matching them to an existing student, you'll need to resolve them by merging the duplicate profiles, or by deleting the newly created profile and re-importing the CTF. For more on this process, take a look at this article.