Importing existing requests

If you were tracking requests in a spreadsheet before, you can import them as a CSV so their clocks and history live in PRA Center. Imports cover requests you have already filed with an agency — not documents or attachments.

• A CSV of many requests at once, from the Imports page.
• A single request, from “Import existing request” on the new-request screen.

Importing is limited to workspace admins.

The filed date you supply — not today — is what starts the statutory deadline, drives any per-day damages, and sets the date an attorney-general complaint would assert. Get it right at import time; it is not something to correct casually afterwards.

Upload the CSV, then tell PRA Center which of your columns holds which field. It guesses from your header row, but never binds a column silently. Four fields are required — the statute, the agency, the filed date, and what records were requested — and you can also point at an existing investigation to file them under.

Nothing is written until you commit. The dry run reports, row by row, what would be imported, what failed and why, and what looks like a duplicate — both against requests you already have and within the file itself. Unknown agencies, statutes that weren’t in force on the filed date, blank descriptions, and dates in the future are all named individually.

Duplicates are judged on the same agency, statute, and filed date. A row flagged as a duplicate is not imported.

Every committed import is listed with the file it came from, when it ran, and how many rows landed. Opening one shows what happened to each row and links to the requests it created.

An import can be rolled back while its requests haven’t moved on. If any of them has correspondence, an approved letter, or a resolved decision against it, PRA Center refuses and names the requests standing in the way rather than unpicking a live matter.

Rolling back asks you to type the words to confirm. Imported requests deliberately get no escalation flow attached — a backdated day one would make months of past steps come due at once — so wire up a flow yourself on any imported request you want chased.