Configuring a finder based on an Excel file of contacts

You can upload an Excel file containing the contact information and then find the corresponding LinkedIn profiles.

Quick setup

​Create a new finder, then apply the following configuration:

1. Select Excel spreadsheet as the source type.

2. Select Contacts as the output type.

3. Give your finder a name in the Name field in order to easily identify it.

4. In the Owner field, select the member who has a valid LinkedIn Sales Navigator license.

5. Click the Click here to open the upload window button, then choose the Excel file containing the data.

6. In the Map columns section, associate the fields in your Excel file with the search criteria supported by the finder.

7. Click the Save finder button.

Parameters

Name

Finder's distinguished name.

Owner

Finder owner. This is the account that will be used to identify the contact corresponding to the data contained in the Excel file thanks to LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

The selected member must have a valid LinkedIn Sales Navigator license. The contacts found will also be marked as seen in the finder owner's LinkedIn Sales Navigator account.

Additional members

Additional members whose LinkedIn accounts will speed up the retrieval and enrichment of the profiles returned in the search results.

Additional members can also use the finder search results for their own campaigns.

Managing finder members

Import XLS file

You must upload the Excel file containing your data and then associate the columns with the finder search criteria. To do this, click the Click here to open the upload window button and then choose the Excel file on your local computer or on one of the listed file storage services. Once the file has been uploaded, you'll access the field associations table.

First row contains column names

Check this checkbox if your file contains the column names in the cells of the first row of the spreadsheet.

Field associations

The fields in your Excel file can be associated with the search criteria below in order to find the contact that best matches your data.

Field	Description
First name	Contact's first name
Last name	Contact's last name
Full name	Contact's full name
Company name	Contact's company name
LinkedIn ID	Represents the part between the brackets in the contact's profile URL https://www.linkedin.com/in/<LinkedIn ID>
LinkedIn URL	Contact's profile URL in the following format: https://www.linkedin.com/in/<LinkedIn ID>
LinkedIn URN	Contact's internal LinkedIn identifier

If you associate one of the following three fields in order of priority, the rest of the associated fields will be ignored:

• LinkedIn URN

• LinkedIn ID

• LinkedIn URL

If none of these fields are associated, you must associate either the First name / Last name pair or the Full name field.

If you associate the Full name field, the system will automatically distinguish the first name from the last name, and only results with a confidence level higher than 75% will be kept.

If you associate the Company name field in addition to the contact name, the contact found must hold a position in the company whose name corresponds to this field.

If several contacts match the criteria, the first one in the list will be used.

Finder status

A finder can be started or stopped. If started, it will continue to retrieve new results according to its scheduling parameters. If stopped, no more new search results will be retrieved.

Scheduling a finder