Upload Process Overview | Yext Hitchhikers Platform

What You’ll Learn

In this section, you will learn:

• What Entity Upload is
• Overview of the upload process steps
• How data cleansing works
• What to know before you upload

What is Entity Upload

Entity Upload allows you to take a flat file with entity information and update the data in Yext Content. You can add or update entities of any type using this method and you can upload as many files as you need as often as you need.

Upload Process

Once your file is ready, there are 5 main parts of an upload:

1. File Configuration: In this step, you map fields from your file to fields in Yext. You can apply additional configuration rules, like data cleansing, applying templates, and more.

2. File Checking: In this step, our system will run through the data in the file, combined with the specified configuration rules, to determine if there are any errors or issues.

3. Fixing Errors: If the system identifies any issues in the previous phase, it will surface the errors for you to work through.

4. Confirming Changes: The last step for you is to confirm changes, ensuring that you are making the changes that you intend to.

5. File Processing: The Yext system will finish processing the file. For very large files, this may take a few minutes. This happens asynchronously – no need to stick around, you can come back to check on the file processing status at any time.

Before You Upload

There are a few key steps of the upload that you should be familiar with before you start.

1. Make sure all of the entity types and fields are created. You cannot create new entity types or fields during the upload.

2. Make sure any labels or folders are created. You cannot create new labels or folders during the upload.

3. Make sure the data has been cleaned.

4. Make sure all records have unique identifiers (Entity ID). If you’re updating existing entities, make sure the unique identifiers match the ones being used in the platform.

5. If your file may contain new entities, make sure that you have the Entity Type and Country fields as they are required for all new entities. If you forget this or this isn’t possible, you can also set this field during the upload flow.

6. Make sure you’ve formatted headers properly. Note: if fields are complex, the headers are structured as Field Name > Sub-Field Name. For example, Featured Message > Description and Featured Message > URL.