When setting up media sources for your Altitude solution, you can opt to submit media source costs to Impact via FTP. This allows cost importing to occur automatically, instead of manually entering the data into Impact.
Note
This feature is available for Altitude clients, impact.com's award-winning analytics solution. To learn more about Altitude, reach out to your CSM (or contact support).
As you finish setting up a new media source, you will be asked if you want to enable cost importing. If you want to import costs via FTP, you will need to enable this setting.
From the left navigation bar, select
[Altitude].From the left navigation menu, select Portfolio → Media.
In the top-right corner, select Create Media Source.
Set up your new media source.
As you finish the last step, you will be asked if you want to enable cost importing. Select Enable Cost Import.
[Toggle on] Import Cost Data Automatically.Select Send data via FTP.
The credentials for your FTP server will be automatically emailed to your technical contact.
Enter the date from which Impact should begin to represent cost data. This is the date from which cost data reporting will begin.
Impact is looking for historical data here, so this date cannot be set in the future. This date also cannot be set more than 3 months in the past.
Select Save.
Read the warning message, then select I understand, continue.
You will be redirected back to the Media Sources screen, where you can find your new media source as well as see the Cost Import Status of the media sources for which you have automated cost importing via FTP.
You can choose to add automatic cost importing to existing media sources. This is also where you can view your Impact FTP server credentials and reset your FTP server password.
You can view the last successful cost data import date as well as the last date for which cost data was found from the Automated Cost Import screen.
From the left navigation bar, select
Altitude.From the left navigation menu, select Portfolio → Media.
Next to the source for which you want to set up FTP cost importing, select
[More].From here, you can view your Impact FTP server credentials and reset your FTP server password.
Select Email FTP Username and Password to send these credentials to your technical contact.
Select Reset FTP Password to reset your Impact FTP server password.
When activating automatic cost data importing on your media source, the email containing FTP server credentials will also explain how to connect to Impact's FTP server. You can ignore the format and details of the tracking batch CSV file sent in the email as they do not apply to cost data.
Once you establish a connection, you can upload your file to the root folder of your FTP account. Once Impact processes uploaded files, they will be deleted from the FTP server.
For faster uploads, compress your CSV files using either ZIP or GZIP. All file names should be suffixed by one of
.csv,.zip, or.csv.gzdepending on your compressions. The column heading requirements for the file is explained in the sections below.
If a file was uploaded with incorrect entries, it can be rolled back by copying the exact same file into the Delete directory of the FTP server. The cost importer will recognize the rollback action and create appropriate modification entries based on the type of cost data being imported.
There are different types of file formats that best suit the different types of sources used, read our article on File formats and When to Use Them to learn more about which type suits which sources best.