Very simple CSV user validation

CSV handling for import of subscriber data

By uploading a simple CSV-file containing information about your subscribers, Visiolink can validate users
trying to log in to the app or on web. This way you can maintain a database of digital subscribers in a simple manor.

How does it work?

You upload a CSV-file with information about your subscribers to a Visiolink FTP. It has to contain at least a unique subscription number and an agreed upon number of relevant fields.

Next time the CSV-file is imported, the system runs through the entries in the database and compares them with the ones in the existing CSV-file. Now it will suspend the ones which no longer figure in the CSV and activate the users now listed in the CSV-file.

Once an hour Visiolink’s server checks to see if there has been uploaded a new CSV-file to the ftp. If a new file is encountered, it will be processed. Please notice that from the moment a new user signs up, until you send a new CSV-file and it is picked up and processed by Visiolink, it can take up to an hour before access is Users (with a subscription number) that no longer figure in the CSV-data will have their access suspended.

Users with suspended access who figure in the CSV-file again will have their access renewed. And new users will have access from the time, Visiolink has imported the CSV-file containing the information about the new users.

To make this work following applies:
1. The format and name of the CSV has to be consistent.
2. You must deliver a CSV-file every time your list of subscribers has changed. That means if a new
subscriber signs up or an existing subscriber falls out.

The format of the csv file

Our system expects the CSV-file to be a text file. The text file is ideally utf-8 encoded with one entry per line having the fields separated by ';' (semicolon), no leading or trailing spaces in the fields and empty fields have to be completely empty.

E.g.:

A single column with unique subscription IDs:  -  987654321

Two columns with unique subscription ID + zip for login: 987654321;8600

Optionally, but not advisable, and only as a short lived intermediate solution:
Two columns with unique username + password (unsafe practice): uniqueuser;password12

Prerequisites for the customer

You have to be able to deliver a consistently formatted CSV-file to our FTP-server.
The subscription numbers have to be unique and constant for the user.

Implementation requirements

Visiolink has to have an example CSV-file from the customer before any implementation can begin.
After analyzing the delivered CSV-file, a setup of the import must be made and tested.