Associating imported records with contacts without ID or name

[cfu]

I need to regularly import records into a custom entity from csv files and these need to be linked to a contact. This works perfectly if the csv file contains a field with the ID or the full contact name, but I am wondering if there is a way to define other contact record fields that can be used to link (for example an external contact ID that is always present in the contact record and in the csv file)?

[esforim]

What determine that it get update is by the option, "Update by", so pretty much anything can be use but it need to be unique so it doesn't import to the wrong one. That is why the ID is usually use.

Another option I guess would be update by Email as email is normally unique per person or by Mobile phone... of course if you allow your contact to share email/phone then this won't work well with those people.

You wouln't want to update by name though, cause you might have a few people that share same name.

[cfu]

What determine that it get update is by the option, "Update by", so pretty much anything can be use but it need to be unique so it doesn't import to the wrong one. That is why the ID is usually use.

Thanks for the reply. I think however, I may not have been clear enough about what I am trying to achieve. I know that I can update from the import by ticking the box 'update by' beside the relvant field and that works as it should, but I am not sure that is what I want to do here.

I have a custom entity (let's call it 'assessment') and a csv file with the data that needs to be imported into it. The 'assessment' entity is linked to contacts, so that I need to set the contact link for each record when the csv is imported. However, I only have the possibility to choose between contact (ID) and contact (name). Contact (name) requires the full name, which requires manually formatting the csv each time and is not reliable for the reason you gave: there may be two people with the same name. Contact (ID) requires the EspoCRM ID to be in the csv file from the external system, which it isn't. There is, however, a participant number that is present in both the contact record and the csv file, so I would like to know whether there is a way to use this field from the contact entity to match instead? Or another (better) way to do this I haven't thought of to attach the 'assessment' to the respective contact on import?

[cfu]

Maybe just to simplify the request:

Can contacts be linked to other entities using anything other than contact (ID) and contact (name) when data is imported from a csv file? Using custom code would be fine if that is the solution here.