Creating & Editing Trailers in Bulk

Samsara allows you to quickly and easily create and edit the trailers in your fleet by uploading a CSV file. Follow the instructions below to format and upload your CSV file. If you'd rather create or edit your trailers individually, please visit this link for more information. 

Preparing your CSV file 

General Guidelines:

• To get started with the CSV upload, go to Assets > More Actions > Upload CSV > Trailer List to pull the existing set of trailers in your organization, or start with the Sample Template.
  
  
  

• Rows represent individual Trailers while Columns are data fields for each trailer (see Summary table below for list of supported fields).

• When you download the assets list, Excel will format the ID column (column A) as a scientific number. It will look something like this:
  
  Prior to saving the CSV file, you must set the number format as Number and remove the excess decimal places ( ).
  
  This prevents Excel from overriding the unique IDs for each asset.

• You can import a file with any number of rows and one or more supported columns to Create and/or Edit Trailer data with each import.

• All imports should include the ID and Name column at a minimum, plus any other columns you wish to add/modify at the time you import.

  • Note that if you are editing existing data and do not include a field as a column in your import, any existing stored data will remain in place for that field.

• If you do include a column and leave a value blank when importing, you should expect for that field to be reset to a default value (typically null or blank). Be careful in these cases to avoid accidentally overwriting existing stored data.

Creating Trailers in Bulk:

• New rows can be included in a CSV which will create new individual trailers. New trailers would be created for rows that have no Trailer ID

• Required Fields:

  • ID column should be present and must remain blank to create a new trailer

  • Name - Required field to create a Trailer

• Notes on adding Optional Fields:

  • Any additional Fields may optionally be included at the time of creation by entering values for those specific columns

  • Tags - Any tags listed during creation must already exist within the Organization or an error will be thrown. Creation of new tags must be done separately from the Tags feature within Settings.

  • Enabled for Mobile - This maps to the ‘Driver App Trailer Selection’ feature and when True will make the Trailer available in the Driver App as long as the organization has ‘Trailer Selection’ enabled.

Editing Trailers in Bulk:

Importing a CSV Upload with existing Trailers will update stored data for those rows. 

• Required Fields:

  • ID value must have a valid internal ID (best obtained by using Upload CSV > Download Trailer List to obtain the set of IDs for all stored trailers)

• Notes on updating optional Fields:

  • If a trailer has existing values stored in the database, and your import file includes columns for those fields when editing, you must include the desired values to store for those fields at the time of import.

    • If existing Trailers are imported with empty values for a particular field, the system will interpret to write that field to blank or null values.

  • Tags- Any tags meant to be associated with a Trailer must be listed at the time the import occurs. If this is left blank, existing tags will be removed. Any tags listed here must already exist within the Organization or an error will be thrown.

    • Creation of new tags must be done separately from the Tags feature within Settings.

  • Enabled for Mobile- This maps to the ‘Driver App Trailer Selection’ feature and when set to True will make the Trailer available in the Driver App as long as the organization has ‘Trailer Selection’ enabled. Please visit this article for additional information on enabling Trailer Selection. 

CSV Import Data Fields Summary: