Migrating from Another Platform

Moving from ArtCall, CaFÉ, Submittable, EntryThingy or a spreadsheet does not require a project plan. Export a CSV, drop it in, and Crafted Call works out which platform it came from and shows you exactly what it will create before anything is written. The importer lives at Admin → Import & Migrate.

Choosing a starting point

When your organization is new, the dashboard offers three ways to begin:

• Bring over your last call takes you to the importer.
• Start a new call builds one from scratch.
• Have us set it up hands it to the Crafted Call team.

There is no wrong order. Plenty of galleries start a live call first and import their history a week later.

Import a call's submissions

Open Admin → Import & Migrate and choose Import from another platform. The wizard has four steps.

Step 1: Upload your CSV. Export a CSV from your current platform and drop it in. The format is detected automatically, and you can override the detection if it guesses wrong. Self-serve imports accept files up to 10 MB and 5,000 rows, and up to five imports an hour.

Step 2: Review what we'll import. This is a dry run: nothing is written yet. You get counts of submissions, distinct artists, images and jury scores, a breakdown of accepted, declined, pending and sold, plus how many rows will be skipped for having no email address and how many were already imported. Underneath is the column mapping, which you can correct, and a list of any headers being ignored.

Step 3: Target call. Pick the call the submissions belong to. The importer does not create calls, so make the call first if it does not exist yet. There is a shortcut to Create a call if the organization has none.

Step 4: How to run it. Self-serve starts immediately and finishes in a few minutes. Concierge hands the file to the Crafted Call team, who scope it and run it for you, usually within 48 hours.

Then select Start import. The job's progress page tracks it row by row, and every past import stays listed under Import history on the main page.

Which platforms are recognized

Crafted Call parses these formats directly:

• ArtCall
• CaFÉ
• Submittable
• EntryThingy
• Generic CSV, for spreadsheets, homegrown systems and anything else with an email column

Detection reads the column headers, so a file that has been edited or partially reordered usually still lands correctly. If it does not, choose the source yourself on step 1, or fall back to Generic CSV and map the columns by hand.

What comes across

• Artists as user records, matched to existing accounts by email address. Rows with no email address are skipped and counted in the preview.
• Submissions, with their status and their metadata. Accepted and declined entries count as already told, so Send Decision Emails never offers last year's letters.
• Artwork records, with titles, media, dimensions and prices where the export carries them.
• Jury rounds and scores from ArtCall exports, including multi-round results. Exports from the other platforms bring artists and submissions across but not their scores yet, so keep those exports for your records.
• Images, automatically from ArtCall exports. Exports from other platforms keep their original image links on the record, and the images themselves are transferred with help from support rather than automatically. Ask about this before you retire your old account.

Calls themselves are not created by the importer, and neither are exhibitions, email templates, eligibility logic or custom form fields. Those are rebuilt in Crafted Call, which is usually the right outcome: your artist-facing language is worth rewriting rather than porting.

Per-platform notes

ArtCall. The best-supported path. Standard exports carry submissions, artists, jury scores and images, and the images move across on their own.

CaFÉ. CaFÉ splits an entry across two Excel reports: Contact Information (the artist's name and email) and Media Information (each work's title, medium and price). Combine them into one sheet before you import: copy the Media columns into the Contact report, matching rows on APP ID, keep one row per work, and save it as CSV. If you upload only one of the two, the preview says which one it is and what is missing. Concierge can combine them for you. Each work in an application arrives as its own entry.

Submittable. Exports carry submission and applicant data. Decision letters and email templates are rebuilt by hand.

EntryThingy. Exports carry submission and artist data, including per-piece detail where present. Jury data in the export is not imported yet.

Spreadsheets and homegrown systems. Use Generic CSV. A well-labeled sheet with one submission per row and an email column maps cleanly. Time spent tidying the sheet beforehand is repaid on the preview step.

Bringing your other records across

Two more imports live elsewhere, because they are different kinds of data.

Your members. Admin → People → Import members loads an active roster from a CSV. It creates member records only. It never emails anyone and never creates login accounts.

Your mailing audience. Subscribers come in through Admin → Marketing → Audience & Segments, which reads Mailchimp's own export files including your unsubscribes. See Importing Your Audience from Mailchimp.

Planning the switch

Import your most recent completed call first. It is small enough to check by hand, and it tells you quickly whether your export carries what you assumed. Then work backwards through your history while your current call runs where it already is.

Do not close your old account until you have confirmed the images. Everything else is in the CSV. The pictures usually are not.

Getting help

• Schedule a migration call to confirm scope and timeline with the migrations team.
• Migration overview for what is handled per platform.
• Choose Concierge on step 4 to hand a file over rather than running it yourself.
• Ask Frida, the assistant in the bottom-right corner, about your specific export.

For anything else, contact support@craftedcall.com.