Module Overview: Group & Update

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Understanding the data you have in your CRM is a huge piece of the data management puzzle. Being able to effectively filter, group, and analyze your data is critical for reporting, data maintenance, and decision-making across your whole organization.

Insycle's Group & Update module makes it easy to drill down into your data to understand what you have in each field. Using Insycle, you can explore field values and unearth important stats, examine individual records, and generate reports.

Key Use Cases

How It Works

Use the Group & Update module to group all values in a given field, analyze your data, and unearth important stats. You can add a second field to sub-group data and potentially get some additional insights.

Select a field to analyze, and Insycle will provide a list of all values it contains. You can see how many times each specific value appears, and there may be additional meta info depending on the field type. This gives you a deeper understanding of your data and can provide valuable reports to help improve decision-making.

Step-by-Step Instructions
Step 1: Select the Field to Analyze

Navigate to Data Management > Group & Update, and select the database and record type. Then explore the templates for an existing solution that may be close to what you need.

Under Step 1, select the Field you want to group by and analyze. In this example, we've chosen the Industry field.

Step 1 select field

Click the Analyze button, and a preview of the value groups that match this criterion will load in the Record Viewer at the bottom of the page.

The Record Viewer lists the unique values contained in the field with a count of how many times each value is found. If the selected field is numeric, there will also be statistical data.

The example below shows that the most common Industry in our company records is Computer Software.

Click the checkbox by a value to expand the group.

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This opens up a secondary Viewer below the first, where you can review the individual records that have the selected value.

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To explore a second grouping–a subset of the first–you can add another field under Step 1.

Step 1, add second field

When you click Analyze, all of the different values for the first field are broken out into groups based on the second field.

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Step 2: Select Records and Update or Delete

You can make straightforward A-to-B updates or deletions from within the Group & Update module. If, after analyzing your data, you need to make more complex updates, use one of Insycle's other powerful modules.

Decide which records you want to modify or delete. To select all records in a group, click the checkbox next to the group in the main Record Viewer.

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To select only specific records, click the checkboxes in the secondary viewer.

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Updating Values

To update the selected values, under Step 2 on the Update tab, specify what the selected field values should be changed to. In this example, all the records that have an Industry of "Transportation" will be updated to "Transportation/Trucking/Railroad."

Click the Update button and confirm the change.

⚠️ Note that there is no preview step. Once confirmed, the update will be applied to your CRM.

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Deleting Records

Under Step 2, click the Delete tab. Make sure the number on the Delete X Contacts button matches the number you want to remove.

⚠️ Note that there is no preview for this step. Once confirmed, the records will no longer be available in your CRM.

When ready, click the Delete button, then confirm the deletion in the popup.

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When completed, the affected records will be shown in the Bulk Update Result popup.

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Save Template

You can save your settings as a template to reuse your configuration for future Group & Update tasks.

Return to the Template menu at the top of the page and click Copy to save your configurations as a new version of the template you started with. Then click the pencil to edit your new template name.

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Audit Trail and History

With the Activity Tracker, you have a complete audit trail and history of changes made through Insycle. At any time, you can download a CSV report that lets you see all of the changes that were made during the operation.

Navigate to Operations > Activity Tracker, search by module, app, or template name, then click the Run ID for the operation.

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Advanced How-Tos

Add Extra Fields to the Layout as a Backup

When you use the Group & Update delete action, the entire record is permanently removed from your CRM. If there's any chance you'll need to refer to this data or restore it later, you may want to add additional fields that could act as a backup. The CSV report can be downloaded from the Activity Tracker at any time.

The CSV only includes fields that are visible in the Record Viewer, so use the Layout tab under Step 1 to add more fields and preserve all the data that might be needed.

Step 1 Layout tab

If you are doing a large data cleanup effort and deleting a large volume of records, best practice is to do a data export directly from the CRM. This will be more comprehensive than what the Insycle report provides.

Filtering Records

While you can use the Group & Update module without filtering your data, this means Insycle will analyze your entire database.

There are a few reasons you may want to apply a filter:

  • You want to focus only on a specific segment of records.
  • If you have thousands of records, update or delete operations can take a long time. It is more efficient and manageable to filter your data down into small segments and use multiple templates rather than running operations for your entire database.
  • There may be an overwhelming number of results. If you are trying to analyze your data, adding a filter or narrowing filter criteria lets you work with a relevant, reasonably sized subset of data.

Under Step 1, use the Filter tab to view and analyze only records that need your attention.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is the old data from the field deleted when I run the bulk update?

Yes, the pre-existing data in the record will be overwritten by the bulk update. If you need this data for reference or restoration, it will be available in the CSV in the Activity Tracker.

Can I restore deleted data?

Yes, but note that only fields included in the Layout settings under Step 1 will be available. See the Advanced How-Tos above for more details.

You can access the deleted data in the Activity Tracker and re-import the partial records if needed.

Additional Resources

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