Changelog

Move items between collections

In March, I released a new feature to move items between two collections. Moving items is useful to clean and segment your data. You can move items once they are enriched, or split your master collection into sub-collections.

Read our documentation to learn how to move items between collections.

JavaScript code

Save JavaScript code into your code library

Writing JavaScript code is both complex and powerful. You can write JavaScript code to fill a property using data from the other properties (for example to set a "valid" property based on the value of other properties). Or you can edit your data with complex operations that would be impossible with simple spreadsheet formulas.

But re-writing every time your JavaScript code is error-prone. With the new "Code Library" released in March, you can save your JavaScript code in your account and run it directly.

Read our documentation or contact me if you need help writing JavaScript.

Call APIs from your JavaScript code

I've disabled the limitations on JavaScript code for standard users. You can now write JavaScript code to interact with external APIs using the fetch interface.

Check our documentation or contact me to discuss your use case.

Datablist API for standard users

Another new release to help you build complex workflow on Datablist with the opening of Datablist API. Datablist API is restricted to standard users.

It works with "Personal API Keys" that let you get access tokens to interact with Datablist API.

Please check our Developers' Documentation and our Postman collection.

Enrichments improvements

Save enrichment configuration

Previously, you had to set the enrichment settings and configuration every time you opened the enrichment drawer.

This was not ideal for day-to-day use. And you could make mistakes during the mapping.

Your settings and properties mappings are now saved in your browser. When you open an enrichment, the configuration will be automatically filled based on your previous run.

Settings with text values can be sensitive. Some enrichment use settings to pass "API Key" for example. To avoid your setting values to be accessed, they are encrypted with a 256 bits key.

This feature is enabled by default. You can disable it by clicking the setting icon at the bottom of the enrichment drawer.

Overwrite items with enrichment results

Another improvement with Enrichments is the "Overwrite value" option. By default, Datablist doesn't edit your cell if it already contains data.

With this option enabled, the enrichment results will overwrite existing values.

New enrichments

Moz.com

If you are managing company leads, you will like the new "Moz.com" integration. It lets you process domains to get domain authority, the number of backlinks, etc. from Moz.

Entities Extractor

Extract company names, person names, or locations from any text. This action uses machine learning to process your data automatically.

The model is trained in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Latvian, Dutch, Portuguese, and Chinese.

GPS Coordinates Finder

This enrichment uses Bing Maps API to get Latitude and Longitude coordinates from an address.

Improve export for large collections

Datablist has a 1.5 million rows limit for CSV files. But you can import big CSV files by splitting them and performing multiple imports. There is no hard limit on the number of items a collection can store. It depends on your browser database.

I improved the export mechanism to work with collections containing several millions of items. You will now see a process notification showing how many items have been collected for the export file.

And two options have been added to deal with exports of large collections. You can now set a count and an offset parameter to export your collection into several files.

Improvements & Fixes

• Improve LinkedInProfileFinder and fix throttling errors
• Show how many items are currently processing during an action/enrichment run
• Fix copy-pasting when the drawer is open
• New Number to Text conversion in "Clean -> Text <=> Number"
• Add "Line Break" delimiter for "Merge Properties"
• New mathematics operation for numbers in BulkEdit. Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide.
• Fix sorting on native collection properties "createdAt" and "updatedAt"
• Prevent running Javascript Code if the preview raises an error
• New Search engine in the documentation
• New documentation page for "Run JavaScript"
• Fix filtering on equal DateTime comparison

Split property

During data cleaning and data normalization, you often need to split text from a property into multiple properties. This is useful to get the domain from email addresses, or to split a Full Name into First Name and Last Name parts.

The splitting algorithm takes a property, a delimiter, and the number of parts. Check the split property documentation.

Merge properties

And the inverse of "Split property" is the "Merge Properties" tool. This one takes multiple properties and a delimiter character(s). Check the merge properties documentation.

New Bulk Edit functions

3 new edit functions are available for bulk editing.

• Remove symbols - This action removes emojis and any character that is not alphanumeric. An option to keep punctuation (dot, comma, etc.) is available. Check remove symbols documentation.
• Convert HTML to text - This action takes HTML code with tags and extracts the text. Check convert HTML to text documentation.
• Remove extra spaces - This action removes multi spaces, new lines, tabulations, etc. Check remove extra spaces documentation.

Miscellaneous

• Custom API key for Deepl - Premium users can now use their own Deepl API key to run the Deepl action and translate CSV files.
• Allow async function in "Run JavaScript"

Fixes

• Fix copy pasting with multiline text and delimiters other than comma

In December 2022, I published a blog article introducing Datablist for Lead Management. I shared a preview of the next features to be developed on Datablist.

In January, the first iteration was released with tons of new features!

New header

A new collection header was released in January. It is responsive and easier to read.

It is split into 3 parts: Collection Information, Search and Filters, and actions. Filters can be saved with "Saved Filters" (more about that later).

Actions are grouped in 4 menus: Import, Export, Clean, Enrich, and Edit. Read our Datablist for Lead Management post to learn more on that.

The columns headers have been improved. The items count is available on the top right, and a menu to manage a property pop up on a column click.

A "New Property" shortcut has been added near the right of the columns.

Clean and Edit features

Cleaning and editing data is a strong focus for 2023 (see our Datablist 2022 in review blog post).

In January, I added two long awaited features: Find and Replace and Bulk Edit. You can read the Find and Replace documentation and the Bulk Edit documentation to learn more.

DataType conversion

A core concept with Datablist is to work with data types. In spreadsheet tools, data is mostly text with some "formatting". Working with date, boolean, number, etc. is a pain in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel.

A new DataType conversion tool has been released in January to quickly create Datetime, Number, and Checkbox properties from a Text property. Check our Text to Datetime, Number, Checkbox documentation.

This tool will be improved to convert data from and to any DataType.

Import from collection

Import data into your collection from another collection. With this feature, it is now easier to have segmented lead lists and build a master list.

Join on a property during the import

Consolidating data is an impossible task on spreadsheet tools. It was previously possible in Datablist with the "unique values" option in a property.

Joining CSV files or two collections to consolidate with an identifier is now accessible directly during the import process.

When importing data into an existing collection with data, a new "Join" toggle is available on the mapping properties.

Then, in the options, you can select LEFT OUTER JOIN or FULL OUTER JOIN to import only matching items or all the items from the import file.

Saved Filters

Creating segments in a collection is now possible with "Saved Filters". This feature is accessible when you have at least one filter enabled on your collection. Click "Save Filters" to save them in your account. Saved Filters are shared with your team members.

Miscellaneous

• Use the import file name to rename the collection after an initial import
• Option to prevent duplicating data during a collection cloning
• Duplicate property with an option to copy values
• Show "tooltip" with editing how-to after double-clicking on a cell
• Add keyboard shortcut to close modal with Escape on Delete Collection and Duplicate Property modals
• Improve copy-pasting behavior
• Disable horizontal over-scroll on datatable to avoid the browser previous page behavior

Fixes

• Fix deduplication algorithm on multi-properties analysis. The bug led to misses in the duplicate check.

Filtering with "or" operation

You can now change how multiple filters are combined.

Select the "or" operation to get items matching at least one filter.

Select the "and" operation to get items matching all the filters.

Currently, only one operation can be used for all filters.

Create a new collection from selected items

We added a shortcut to creating a new collection with items. The action is available from the "selected" items actions.

It clones the current collection properties and copies the selected items in it.

Auto-Detect CSV file encoding

The CSV format is text-based but the encoding is not standardized. Two CSV files generated by Microsoft Excel can use two different encodings if one is generated from a system configured in French or in English.

And the bad news, the encoding is not stored in the CSV format.

When loading a CSV file, Datablist has used UTF-8 encoding so far. It worked for English-based CSV files. Or if by chance the CSV file was encoded in UTF-8.

For CSV files with accents or special characters, you ended up with weird characters.

Datablist now analyzes your CSV file to list potential encodings. A score is calculated for each encoding and the one with the highest score is used.

You can change the encoding if the imported data still contains weird characters.

Fixes & Improvements

• Fix cloud synchronization errors after "undoing" items delete
• Fix Excel file import when header names are numbers
• Fix cloning empty collection
• New "is not" and "does not contain" filters

Combine or drop conflicting values when merging duplicate items

In September and October, we improved the auto-merge algorithm in our "Duplicates Finder". The previous version could only merge non-conflicting items. For example, if two items were duplicates on their email address. Datablist could merge them if the other properties had similar or empty values.

All the remaining items with conflicts had to be merged manually.

On CRM data or any contacts list, most of the duplicates found had to be manually merged.

With our improved auto-merging algorithm, you can now define how to deal with your conflicting data during the merge process. Two options are available :

• Combine conflicting properties - With this option, conflicting properties will be concatenated with a separator. If two contacts have a conflicting "Note" property. The merged item will have a single "Note" property with the two values concatenated. The delimiter here could be a new line. Available delimiters are space, comma, semi-colon, and new line.
• Drop conflicting properties - With this option, only the value from a master item will be kept during the duplicate items merging. This is useful for technical properties. If your "Contacts" have an "Id", "Created On", or "Last Modified" property, you don't need to combine them. You only want to keep the values from one item. At the moment, the primary item is the one with the most data. In the future, you will be able to define rules to select your primary item.

If you run the auto-merge algorithm and conflicting items remain. Conflicting properties will be listed. Configure the conflicting properties with the "combine" or "drop" options and rerun the auto-merge to finish the merging process.

Download invoices from your account

You don't need to send me an email to get your invoices! Your invoices are now listed in your account. The invoices can be downloaded as PDFs. Check your Billing page to see your invoices.

Quick feedback system

Datablist is in beta. I'm looking for a maximum of feedback to know your use cases, your issues, and your ideas on how to improve the product.

I've been sending emails to users to learn how they use the product but the response rate is very low. In October, I tested another approach with a very simple feedback system directly in the backoffice. It pops up after you export your collection items; after you use the Duplicates Finder; or after using Datablist for some time. And it shows only once a month.

After a few weeks, I've collected a little less than 30 ratings. Mostly good ratings 🤩 and interesting feedback.

Fixes & improvements

• Add an error message when loading an empty CSV
• Show a warning message to free users to alert their data is not synced with the cloud
• Fix check credits balance regularly when running an action on a large collection
• Fix cloud saving on checkbox data
• Fix cloud synchronization after deleting a property
• Fix copy/pasting text in the search input
• Fix auto merging of duplicates with values with different case