Purpose: This guide covers importing Events: creating a season of scheduled events in bulk, updating existing events, and the date, location, and lookup rules that event imports depend on.
Related: Importing data into Administrate | Choosing your import workflow
Choosing the action
Events are created per delivery type, so pick the action that matches what you are scheduling:
- createClassroom for classroom or virtual classroom events
- createLMS for self-paced events
- createBlended for blended events
- update to change existing events by Administrate ID
- upsertClassroomEventByExternalId (and the LMS and Blended equivalents) when an external system owns the schedule
Required combinations
Validation enforces a few pairings on event creates:
- Classroom and blended events need a start and an end. Provide either the local date-time columns or the time-zoned ones for each.
- Public events need a location.
- Private events need a financial unit, which resolves from a currency code or name, or a training token type.
Dates, times, and time zones
- Local date-times use the format
2025-11-04T14:00:00. - Time-zoned date-times include an offset:
2025-11-04T14:00:00+03:00. - Time zone name columns must contain a standard identifier such as
America/New_York.
The Excel template shows the expected format when you hover over a column header.
Lookups event imports rely on
- Course: the course template column resolves by course code first, then by ID. Keep course codes stable and unique; import course templates before the events that reference them. See Import Course Templates (CSV).
- Location, tax type, and similar references must already exist and match exactly. A value that resolves to no record, or to more than one, fails the row.
Beyond creating the event
- Instructors can be assigned in bulk with the event addStaff actions.
- Learners can be registered onto events in bulk; see Import Registrations and Results (CSV).
- Session times can be adjusted with the session record type, which accepts plain numeric session IDs.
Watch out for
- Connected systems. Event creation can flow to integrations such as LMS platforms and calendars. See Importing when other systems are connected.
- "Not found" lookups are the top failure source for event imports, and they surface only while the import runs, not during upfront validation. Confirm courses, locations, and tax types exist before importing.
- Time zones deserve a pilot row. Import one event, open it, and confirm the times display as intended before loading the season.
- No rollback: a partially failed import leaves the successful events in place. Correct and re-run only the failed rows.