GL Pro Tips - Roster Imports

(Almost) Every Wednesday, Guild Launch Pro Tips will explore common issues, a look at features as well as creative ideas on how to use the Guild Launch system. This week, Mike will guide you through Roster Imports.

Hey gang, I apologize for missing the last two weeks. Things were busy here with testing and all, and I fell a bit behind. Anyway, I am back and today we will talk about Roster Imports.

Two years ago Blizzard released their Armory and Guild Launch Armory Imports were born. Since then, a few other companies have released their own sites with in game character data and we have made sure to include imports for those games as well.

To import your roster, go to your Guild Roster page and you will see a series of links on the left in the Roster Navigation section. The name of the link will change depending on your game, for example - EverQuest II will say, "EQ2 Players Imports". Clicking the proper link will take you to the import page.

The imports page is a little different depending on the game you play and I will cover each of them real quick:

EverQuest II - In order to import your EverQuest II roster, you first need to go to the EQ2 Players site and do a search for your guild. Once you have found your guild page, look at the URL. It should look something like this:

http://eq2players.station.sony.com/guilds/guild_profile.vm?guildId=12345678

The difference is going to be in that red box where the 12345678 is. That number is unique to your guild and that is what you want to use on your Guild Launch site. Copy and paste that number into the EQ2 Players Guild ID field and you are done with the first step.

Lord of the Rings Online - Once you are on the Kinship Roster page, you will see a link on the left for Lotro.com Imports. On that page you will see a field for Guild Name Override and it should be filled in with the name you picked for your site. This name will need to be the same as it is in game and you can change it in this field if it is different. Once that is set, you are done with the first step.

World of Warcraft - On your Guild Roster page you will see two links for imports. The first is Armory Imports and the other is Profiler Imports. Armory Imports will use Blizzard's Armory to grab the data for your guild. The Profiler Imports page uses the Guild Launch Profiler to upload your guild data and is usually more accurate than the Armory since the data is updated as soon as you log off line.

Armory Import - This works just like the Lord of the Rings Online import above. You go to your Guild Roster and click the Armory Imports link on the left. This page will show you the Guild Name as you entered it on the site and can be overwritten by typing a different name. The Armory requires you to input a + where a space would be. Guild Launch would not work, but Guild+Launch would. You can also see what server your set your guild to, though you can not change it on this page.

Profiler Import - Once you have downloaded and set up the Guild Launch Profiler (instructions here), logged in and collected the data it is time to log out and upload the file. You want to go to the Guild Roster page and click the Profiler Import link. On this page you will see your entered Guild Name and a form to browse for the file you need to upload. Confirm your Guild Name is exactly the same as in game with a + where a space would be.

To upload the form, click the browse button and look in the following directory:

"World of Warcraft/WTF/Account/User Name/Realm Name/Character Name/SavedVariables/GuildLaunchProfiler.lua"

User Name is what you type to log in, Realm Name is the server you play on, Character Name is the character you collected the data with. When you are in the Character directory there is a SavedVariables folder, make sure to open that and you should find your GuildLaunchProfiler.lua. Once you have opened that file you will see it listed and click upload. You are all done!

Other Options - On the import pages are a few other options that I will discuss here. None of the imports have all of the following options, so do not be alarmed if you do not see it.

Synchronize Roster - This option will remove characters based on your import data. If a character is claimed by an account or has DKP it will not be removed by this option. This will allow you to have characters represented on your site from different guilds or even different games.

Synchronize Ranks - Checking this box will import the ranks and automatically assign them to the characters. This prevents you from having to manage which character should display what rank and keep track of who changed.

Import Character Gear and Stats - By default, an Armory import only grabs the Race and Class data and nothing else. Checking this will grab all of the gear, stats and spec information for your guild. Using this feature will greatly increase the amount of time an import will take. As such, I only suggest doing this maybe once every few days or once a week with regular imports in between.

Update Basic Tradeskill Info - This option for EverQuest II guilds will grab what professions and the rank for each character. At the time of this writing, Sony does not allow us to get the actual recipe data.

Pro Tip - If you are having trouble importing double check your Guild Name and Server. Go to your Admin section and click the Guild Hosting Properties link on the left to change that information if necessary. LotrO and WoW guilds will need to have their name *exactly* as it is in game and WoW guilds need to have a + in place of a space. Gûild Launch, Guild+Launch and Guild Launch are all different guilds as far as the imports are concerned.

Hopefully this will help you all get your data imported. As always, if you have questions or comments you can email me; support@guildlaunch.com.

~Mike