In this first lesson, we’ll dive into one of the essential first steps of Parabola: importing your data. 

Parabola makes it easy to import data from CSV and Excel files, PDFs, and emails, as well as the tools you use everyday like Shopify or Netsuite. It also supports API integrations so you can pull in data from anywhere. 

Review our integrations page for a full overview of available integrations. 

To begin, we recommend starting simple. Importing data from a CSV file, an Excel file, or a Google Sheets will be the fastest way to get your data into Parabola. This approach lets you shift focus to the real power of Parabola: manipulating and transforming your data. 

We recommend setting up integrations later, and if you have any questions about connecting to different systems or APIs, reach out to our support team. We’re always happy to help. 

Building challenge

The best way to put what you learn in this course into practice is to follow along with the sample data challenge. Follow these steps to complete the first building challenge: 

1. Download the following CSV files
   1. Inventory data
   2. Sales data‍
2. Click this link to create a new Flow 
3. Add a card to the canvas titled Pull sales data 
4. Add a Pull from CSV file step to the Pull sales data card to load the sales data into Parabola (we’ll add in some inventory data in the next lesson)

To check your work, take a look at this quick video.

Pulling from a CSV file

To get started, upload your first CSV file following these steps:

1. Navigate to the Integrations tab of the search bar in the data canvas.
2. Search for the Pull from CSV file step.
3. Drag the Pull from CSV file step onto the canvas or directly onto a card to organize your workflow.
4. Double-click on the step to open it, and then drag and drop your CSV file into the designated area.