Currently in Glific, the bulk contact uploads can only be performed by the Glific Tech team. NGOs can use the discord channel or any other communication medium to share the required details with the team. The team requires all the list of contacts with specific details in an Excel format sheet. Once the required sheet is available it takes 24hrs or less to add them to the NGOs Glific account.
File Format
Here is a sample Excel format that NGO needs to provide to the Glific team for bulk contacts onboarding.
Sharing the details for the column below:
Name: It should contain the name of the beneficiary. This is a mandatory field for the onboarding process and it also makes sure that the organization knows their contacts and doesn't perform any spamming activity.
Phone (WhatsApp number): It should contain the active WhatsApp number of the beneficiary from which they will send or receive the messages.
Please make sure to add the country code to the number. For example 91 for India based contact
Optin: It should contain the DateTime string of when you have taken permission from the user to send them a message. This is a mandatory field and it ensures that NGOs have taken permission from their beneficiaries to communicate with them through WhatsApp.
Note: WhatsApp policy is very strict about this and if the users started blocking the numbers on WhatsApp, as per the policy WhatsApp will connect with NGOs for the consent details and also might ban the business number for a lifetime.