Convoso’s manual list import is a CSV upload through the interface — one file at a time, one campaign at a time. If your operation receives new lead files regularly from vendors or internal sources, that manual process is a recurring bottleneck that automation eliminates. Here’s how to build scheduled, automated list import with the hygiene checks that protect every campaign before the first dial goes out.
## The Manual Import Problem
Manual list import in Convoso has two failure modes.
The first is operational: someone has to do it. New leads sitting in a shared drive because the person who handles imports is busy, out, or forgot is a dialing opportunity that’s been missed. At the start of a day, a campaign that needed fresh inventory isn’t getting it because the list is still unimported.
The second is compliance: manual imports rarely include pre-import hygiene. A CSV arrives from a vendor, someone uploads it to Convoso, and the campaign starts dialing. The list hasn’t been checked against the Federal DNC registry, state DNC lists, the litigator database, or your own internal opt-outs. The compliance exposure starts with the first dial.
Automated import handles both. Lists arrive, get processed, get scrubbed, and land in Convoso ready to dial — on schedule, with documentation.
## How Automated Import Works
The import pipeline runs on a schedule. When a new list file arrives at a defined location — a cloud storage bucket, a shared network folder, or a vendor SFTP drop — the pipeline picks it up, processes it, and imports it into the correct Convoso campaign.
**The pipeline stages:**
**1. Intake.** Monitor the source location for new files. When a file appears, validate it — expected columns, no encoding issues, minimum record count. A malformed file should fail loudly before reaching any subsequent stage.
**2. Pre-import hygiene.** Scrub the list before it touches Convoso:
– Deduplicate against leads already active in the target campaign
– Check against your internal opt-out list
– Check against the Federal DNC registry
– Check against state DNC lists for relevant states
– Check against the litigator database (Blacklist Alliance, Contact Center Compliance, or equivalent)
Records that hit any of these checks are removed from the import set and logged with the reason. What remains is a clean list.
**3. Import.** Use the Convoso API to create or append to a list in the target campaign. The API supports programmatic list management — you’re not screen-scraping the upload interface.
**4. Post-import confirmation.** Verify the record count in Convoso matches the expected post-hygiene count. If the counts don’t match, the pipeline fails loudly rather than assuming the import completed correctly.
**5. Logging.** Record the file name, source, timestamp, pre-hygiene count, post-hygiene count, removals by reason, and the Convoso list ID the records landed in.
## The Complication: Compliance Exposure Starts at First Dial
The sequence matters. The hygiene checks have to happen before import, not after.
A list imported to Convoso without pre-scrubbing starts accumulating compliance exposure from the moment the first dial goes out. If a litigator’s number is on the list, that dial is already a liability — it can’t be undone retroactively by a DNC removal after the fact. The call happened. TCPA violations attach to completed calls, not pending ones.
The trap most operations fall into: they have a DNC removal process for numbers that come in after the campaign is running, but no systematic pre-import scrubbing. The removal process handles complaints; it doesn’t prevent them.
**The correct sequence:**
1. Receive the list
2. Run all hygiene checks
3. Remove flagged records and log the reason
4. Import only the clean remainder
5. Document the hygiene run with timestamps
This is prevention, not remediation. The list that enters Convoso should already be clean — the hygiene run is the proof.
**The litigator list specifically:** most automated import pipelines check Federal DNC and stop there. The litigator database is a separate scrub against numbers held by serial plaintiffs. These numbers aren’t on any opt-out list. They’re clean by standard DNC criteria and still represent the highest TCPA litigation risk in your list. Pre-import scrubbing against Blacklist Alliance, Contact Center Compliance’s Litigator Scrub, or an equivalent is the check most operations miss.
## What the Architecture Requires
**A file watcher or scheduler.** The trigger for import automation depends on how lists arrive. If vendors drop files to a cloud storage bucket, a storage trigger can initiate the pipeline when a new file appears. If files arrive on a schedule, a cron job or scheduled Cloud Run job works. If files come from an SFTP server, a polling job checks the server on a defined interval.
**A normalization layer.** Vendor lists arrive in different formats, column orders, and encodings. A normalization step before hygiene checking converts every input to a consistent internal format — E.164 phone numbers, standardized column names, UTF-8 encoding.
**Hygiene API integrations.** Each hygiene check requires an API call to the relevant service. The pipeline needs valid credentials for each service and should handle API failures gracefully — a hygiene service that’s temporarily unavailable should pause the import, not skip the check.
**Convoso API integration.** List creation and record upload use the Convoso API. The integration needs valid credentials and should validate the upload response against the expected record count.
**Logging to durable storage.** Every import run should produce a log entry that’s retained. If a compliance question arises months later about a specific number, the log should show when it was imported, which hygiene checks it passed, and which campaign it landed in.
## Frequently Asked Questions
**Does Convoso support programmatic list management through the API?**
Yes. The Convoso API includes endpoints for list creation, record addition, and campaign assignment. The interface upload is the most visible path, but the API supports the same operations at scale without manual steps.
**What if a vendor sends the same number on multiple lists?**
The deduplication stage catches this — numbers already present in the target campaign are excluded from the new import with the reason logged. If the same number appears multiple times in a single incoming file, that’s caught during normalization before any API calls are made.
**How does the pipeline handle files from multiple vendors with different formats?**
Each vendor source gets a normalization configuration — a mapping from that vendor’s column names and format to the internal standard. New vendor sources require a new normalization config, not changes to the core pipeline logic.
**What happens if the Convoso API import partially succeeds?**
The post-import record count check catches this. If Convoso confirms fewer records than the pipeline sent, the run is flagged as incomplete rather than successful. The remaining records can be retried without re-running hygiene on the already-imported subset.
## If You’d Rather Have This Running
I build automated list import pipelines for contact centers using Convoso — with the pre-import hygiene, the record count validation, and the audit logging that makes every import defensible. Start here: rfditservices.com/intake.html
The first conversation is free.