The Import Records tool creates a series of reports designed to help you better understand any errors that occurred while processing your data. Each time the tool is run, a new set of reports is created and identified by the date and time.

Log file

The Log file header includes basic envelope information about the processes that ran including the username that ran the tool, what datasets were used, and the locator used (if the data was geolocated).

The body of the log file includes reports and notes printed by the tool as the records were processed. As each stage of the tool begins a timestamp and brief message are printed. The tool also reports the numbers of records that were successfully and unsuccessfully processed after completing many of the major processes. When records cause problems (for example, a record that was not successfully geocoded), they are removed from processing and are written out to another report. A note is printed in the log file stating the number of records that were not successfully processed, and in which report they can be found.

The configuration includes an option to print a summary of the processed data. If a summary field is provided, this summary also appears in the configuration file. For example, summarizing the data by report date or an administrative boundary can indicate days or areas that may have missing reports.

Unmatched report

The Unmatched report is only created when the data was located using the location type ADDRESSES. This report contains all records that did not meet two criteria:

• Geocoded with a Status of M (matched) or T(tied) and
• Geocoded with a Addr_type of AddrPoint, StreetAddr, BldgName, Place, POI, Intersection, PointAddress, StreetAddress, StreetInt, or StreetAddressExt.

Records may not have met these criteria for many reasons. To help troubleshoot these issues, records in this report contain all fields from the attempted geocoding (Loc_name, Shape, Status, Score, Match_type, Match_addr, Side, User_fld, Addr_type, ARC_Street, ARC_City, ARC_ZIP) as well as all fields from the original record. Use these values to determine why records were not successfully processed and to resolve the issues.

For more information, see About geocoding a table of addresses.

First, identify why the record was written to this report. Look at the value in the Status column.

• Records with M failed the second criteria - they were geocoded, but not to a scale conducive with incident mapping, likely to the city or ZIP code level.
• Records with T (tied) had multiple options that were viewed by the locator as equally probably. There is likely some address information missing or slightly incorrect that is creating ambiguity for the locator.
• Records with U (unmatched) were unable to be geocoded to an acceptable probability level. This probability threshold is set in the locator properties, and is often near 80%.

Next, resolve the issue. You can make the necessary changes to the original report, get a corrected report from the data source, or make the necessary changes directly in the Unmatched report and re-process the records using the same workflow and this report as the input spreadsheet.

• Is the address complete?

  Whether the full address was contained within a single field (for example, FULLADDR), or spread across several fields (for example, FULLADDR, CITY, STATE, ZIP), verify that the level of information provided matched your locator. Your local locator may be able to handle a house number and street name, but that isn't enough information to get a good result from the World Geocoding Service. Provide as much information as possible to get the best results from the locator.

• Is the address correct?

  Many locators require at least an 80% match. Verify that the provided values are spelled correctly, house number values are reasonable for the range of the road, and that the address falls within the provided city, state, and ZIP.

• Does the address fall within the range of your locator?

  Locators do not always cover all addresses. Private roads and new developments may not exist in the locator yet, or the record may fall outside the extents of your locator. In these cases, try another locator, or get the coordinates for the location of the record and process the record or records using Configure Record Import (XY) and Configure Record Import (Addresses) tool.

Once the corrections have been made, reprocess the report. The Delete Duplicates option can be used to ensure that records are not added to the Target Features.

If you would like to stop excluding results from processing, or to modify the Status or Addr_type values that are acceptable for your data, this can be done by editing the python script import_records.py found in the same directory as the ImportRecords.tbx.

Near the top of the script is a section titled Accepted levels of geolocation. The section contains two list variables: addrOK and match_value. Both lists must contain at least one value enclosed in quotation marks. Add, remove, or modify the values as long as:

• Each list is enclosed in a single pair of square brackets []
• Each item is enclosed in a single pair of quotes
• Multiple items are separated with a comma

For example, allow the tool to only process results with a Status of "M" by changing:

• match_value = ["M","T"] to match_value = ["M"]

Not appended report

This report contains those records which were successfully assigned geometry through geolocation or coordinates, but could not be appended to the Target Features provided during configuration. This commonly occurs because of a field type mismatch between the data being copied and the field type in the feature class. The first field in the report (ERRORFIELD) should provide a clue to which field interrupted the append action. Look at the values in this field and compare them to the properties of the corresponding field in the feature class. The value may have been too large for the field, or the value may contain invalid characters. Some characters cannot be copied into some field types, for example numeric fields require numeric values. Modifying the value or re-creating the field in the feature class with a field type that will accept the expected values usually resolves this issue.

Records assigned geometry using coordinates may also be written to this report if the X and Y values associated with the record are 0,0 and the Ignore Blank Coordinate Values option was enabled in the Configure Record Import (XY) or Configuration Record Import (Addresses) tool. These records can be re-processed after providing corrected coordinates or by geocoding these records.