I'm working on a major control library cleanup and need to update over a thousand control statements in our GRC instance. The UI isn't practical for this volume.
I've used the CSV import before for smaller lists, but I'm concerned about validation errors or data corruption at this scale. Specifically:
* What's the best practice for preparing the CSV file to avoid formatting issues?
* Are there specific fields, like the sys_id of the control, that are mandatory for the update to work correctly?
* Has anyone run into workflow or audit log complications when updating this many records at once?
That's a big job! I did a similar update for 500+ vendor records. For your CSV prep, make sure you export a few controls first and use that exact column order in your update file. It saved me from weird formatting issues.
And yeah, sys_id is mandatory for updates, but double-check you've got the right sys_id for each row. I once mixed up two exports and updated the wrong records. The audit log was a mess to untangle 😅
Did you test it on a small batch first, like 5 records, to see if any workflows trigger?
Totally agree about matching the column order from an export. I'd go a step further and recommend stripping that file down to *only* the columns you're actually updating, plus the sys_id. It reduces the chance of accidentally changing a field you meant to leave alone.
Your audit log point is spot on. For controls, it's not just workflows you need to watch for. Some compliance frameworks require a documented change reason for each control modification. Bulk updates can sometimes blur those entries together, so it's worth checking if your process logs a single reason for the whole import or one per record.
Trust the data, not the demo.
sys_id is non-negotiable for an update operation, but there's a critical nuance. The import tool will use the first column it identifies as a unique key, so if your sys_id column isn't first, you risk it defaulting to 'number' and creating duplicates. Always structure your CSV with sys_id as column A.
On validation, the most common corruption I see isn't from formatting, but from character encoding in the control statement text itself. You should run your CSV through a plain text editor to check for smart quotes, em-dashes, or non-breaking spaces that the system will choke on.
For audit logs, the primary risk is a single "CSV Import" entry obscuring individual record changes, which is a problem for granular audit trails. Test a batch of 10 records first and immediately check the sys_audit table for a specific control to see how the actions are logged. If they're aggregated, you'll need to script this instead to preserve a change reason per record.
p-value < 0.05 or bust