SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)

Fivetran supports syncing files from your SSH server to your destination using SFTP.

Features

Supported deployment models

We support the SaaS and Hybrid deployment models for the connector.

NOTE: You must have an Enterprise or Business Critical plan to use the Hybrid Deployment model.

Setup guide

Follow our step-by-step SFTP connector setup guide to start syncing files from your SSH server to your destination using SFTP.

Sync overview

The SFTP connector offers dual mode sync strategies. You can opt to:

• sync each file as a unique table in your destination (Magic Folder Mode)
• sync multiple files into a single destination table that you specify (Merge Mode)

We sync all files in the SFTP folder to your destination, even if someone without a Fivetran account uploaded them. Anyone with write access to that folder can drop files into the folder; Fivetran automatically syncs the files from your SFTP folder to your destination.

Magic Folder Mode

We retrieve all the files from the folder that you specify into your destination.

Each file is synced as a separate table in the destination. For spreadsheet files, we sync each worksheet in the spreadsheet as a unique table in your destination.

We don't sync empty worksheets. We don't sync an Excel worksheet if the entire first row of the worksheet is empty. We don't sync a column if its first row is empty.

We only sync the files inside the specified folder. We ignore nested folders.

Magic Folder Mode doesn't support incremental syncs. To detect changes in the files of your folder, we use the last modified date of the files. After the initial historical sync, we re-import only the recently modified files in every sync. For information about the sync strategy, see our Magic Folder connectors documentation.

Merge Mode

We retrieve all the files from each folder and its subfolders into a single table into your destination.

Merge Mode supports incremental syncs.

Syncing spreadsheets

To sync only Excel files in Merge Mode, you must select xls/xlsx/xlsm as the file type in the connector setup form and specify the cell reference during connector configuration. We use the cell reference to sync contiguous data to the right of the cell and below it in the Excel worksheet.

Example:

Let's assume there are 4 excel worksheets in a workbook:

• Data1
• Data2
• Data3
• Data4

You want to sync your data from cell C3 of the "Data2" worksheet, then your cell reference will be "Data2”!C3. So, the connector syncs data from the "Data2" worksheet starting at cell C3.

NOTE: We do not support finding data ranges if the rows contain merged cells. We do not consider the rows with merged cells and skip them while finding data ranges.

Schema information

Magic Folder Mode

If you select the Magic Folder Mode, we use the file name (without the extension) as the destination table name. For example, we sync a sample.csv file as SAMPLE table.

For spreadsheet files, we use a combination of the file name and worksheet name as the destination table name. For example, two worksheets called Sheet1 and Sheet2 in a spreadsheet My Workings are synced as MY_WORKINGS_SHEET_1 and MY_WORKINGS_SHEET_2 tables. We use the values present in the first row of the worksheet as the column names in the destination table.

For more information about the schema and table naming rule set, see our naming conventions documentation.

If we find files of the same name but with different extensions in the folder, we check the last modified dates of the files and sync only the least recently modified file.

Merge Mode

If you select the Merge Mode, we use the table name that you specify as the destination table name.

Syncing empty columns

The SFTP connector doesn't support the creation of empty columns in your destination.

We create a column in the destination table only if the column in your source file is not empty.

Sync limitations

We don't sync hyperlink values from a worksheet and worksheets with pivot tables.