Configuring nightly imports
The ability to import data into ClientSpace provides a powerful toolset to connect your ClientSpace data with external systems, but it can be tricky to configure. This topic provides a primer for on-demand imports as well as some best practices to help make you a data imports expert. The ability to tie imported data to existing data in the system is critical but requires an understanding of your data and how the underlying tables relate. 
In the context of relational databases, a foreign key is a field (or collection of fields) in one table that uniquely identifies a row of another table. In other words, a foreign key is a column or a combination of columns that are used to establish and enforce a link between two tables. The table containing the foreign key is called the child table, and the table containing the candidate key (or primary key) is called the parent table. ClientSpace most commonly uses foreign key relationships to relate data between dataforms within the same workspace. An example of this would be the relationship between clients and locations. The ProjectID of the client would be the fkProjectID (fk for foreign key) of the location allowing you to store the locations for all clients in one table, yet still, relate a client's specific locations to the client workspace. as well as Relational Database The relational model is the conceptual basis of relational databases. Proposed by E.F. Codd in 1969, it is a method of structuring data using relations. In the relational model, all data must be stored in relations (tables), and each table consists of rows and columns (kind of like a spreadsheet). Each table must have a header and body. The header is simply the list of columns in the table. The body is the set of data that actually populates the table, organized into rows. You can extrapolate that the junction of one column and one row will result in a unique value - this value is called a tuple. The second major characteristic of the relational model is the usage of keys. These are specially designated columns within a table used to order data or relate data to other tables. One of the most important keys is the primary key, which is used to uniquely identify each row of data. To make querying for data easier, most relational databases go further and physically order the data by the primary key. Foreign keys relate data in one table to the primary key of another table..
Importance of ImportIDs
When configuring imports, it is vital that you understand the data relationships within your ClientSpace installation. Each record to be imported must have a unique identifier (ImportID) as well as at least one column containing a method for relating that imported record to another record in the system, be it an Organization, Workspace, Contact, or a combination of these. An incorrectly configured import can corrupt or overwrite existing data, which can then be difficult or even impossible to fix or replace.
If you have not spent the time to completely map this out or have questions about how the imported records tie to existing data, STOP, and log an Extranet case. Request either help in configuring your import or training about the import process. It is much easier (and frankly less expensive) to request help in getting an import set up right the first time, than it is to incorrectly import records, and then request help cleaning up the associated fallout.
Why won't my imports run?
There is a maximum value of 10 mb for manual imports to ClientSpace. Attempts to validate manually or import a file larger than 10 mb alerts the user that the file has exceeded this limitation and stops the validation and run imports processes. Also due to the nature of imports, the standard user interface time out value is far too short to be useful, so the timeout value for processing manual imports is 90 minutes (5400 seconds). If a manual import takes more than 90 minutes to run, the system times out the process, stopping the import. Nightly imports that happen on a schedule are not subject to time or file size restrictions.
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