Article summary
Recover provenance for a Namibia list with missing country fields before creating +264 candidates and accepting WhatsApp Registration.
A local phone column with no country field cannot receive +264 merely because the filename says Namibia. Before WhatsApp Registration, recover country evidence from orders, form versions and provenance. Rows that cannot be recovered remain unknown.
Use four evidence levels
| Level | Evidence | Action |
|---|---|---|
| A | User explicitly selected Namibia | Create candidate |
| B | Consistent order or address | Create after review |
| C | Campaign or filename | Insufficient; investigate |
| D | No provenance | country_unknown |
Inspect the form version first
An old form may have defaulted or hidden country, making the export falsely uniform. Retain form_version and original submission. A default is not a user choice.
Keep the source phone immutable
Store phone_raw as text. Create a +264 candidate separately with evidence_level. Do not reclassify an existing international phone.
Validate the rule with a small sample
Sample every provenance and compare candidates with source records. If errors cluster, pause that source rather than changing the global rule to improve pass rate.
Registration does not validate country
TXT contains one phone per line and Excel returns phone plus registration observation. A returned result cannot prove that a previous country guess was correct.
Keep unknown in the report
Count country unknown, format exception, task unknown and registration observation separately. Removing unknown may raise a +264 rate while erasing quality evidence.
Append an event to CRM
Reconnect through batch_row and append a dated registration event. Output does not overwrite country, language, permission or primary phone.
Country recovery is not permission
Recovering Namibia evidence does not create contact authority. Opt-out and purpose limits still take priority.
Completion standard
Every +264 candidate has a traceable evidence level; unsupported rows are not forced to completion. That matters more than full-table acceptance.
