Excel worksheet import of CUSTOM PROPERTIES?

[webyourbusiness]

What do I need to name the columns I want to import from an Excel spreadsheet in Business for Custom Properties.

I have the properties for Make, Model and Year for Car parts catalog, but I'm not able to get the import to see them - I recall customvar, but that's not working in the Excel sheet.

tia

WYB

[NormanRouxel]

If you want to import a Custom property and it's value then you have to first define it as a ValidCustomProperty earlier in the import file. You only need to do this once regardless of how many products use it.

The Help File / Hierarchical Import has a definition of ValidCustomProperty.

Norman

[webyourbusiness]

I should have said "externally linked file" not import. This is an excel spreadsheet linked for external product linking of product data.

hth

[NormanRouxel]

Sorry have never done that. Hope someone else knows.

Norman

[Jan]

You can't link to custom properties using external database linking (unless I missed the field in the list).

External linking it limited to a small number of fields, if you go to the external linking dialog and look at the list of fields on the right hand side those are the fields that you can link to. You can use any name you like in the external source because you can drag and drop them into the correct field in the linking dialog.

The way to get those fields into catalog would be to import them using hierarchical import as Norman said.

Regards,

[webyourbusiness]

I know it's not on the list of fields, but then they don't appear in Flatfile import, yet can be imported using hierarchical. I just figured it was possible - it certainly doesn't sound like too much of a stretch.

Chris (B & D) - how about this on the wishlist? It seems simple enough in theory! :D

[cdicken]

I am the main champion for this feature within Actinic - I am very very keen to see it. Thanks for adding a little fire to my campaign. Fingers-crossed, this will make an appearence in the next major release.

[Lizzie_Scott]

Hi,

I'm currently evaluating the V6 demo. Having the ability to link custom fields to an external database would be a big advantage -I don't suppose there's been a new release since these posts from Nov 2002?

If hierarchical import is the only route with this, is it a time consuming process? I have a relational database in Access with about 1000 products. I would need to update the product catalogue on at least a weekly basis.

Ta :)

[Jan]

It would be fairly simple to write a simple SQL query to copy the values from your table to the Actinic table. If you really wanted to use hierarchical import to do this then you can do it but it is a bit tricky but can be done.

Regards,

[Lizzie_Scott]

thanks for the info Jan.

So I can edit the Actinic mdb files directly? I will have to get my pet techie to help me with the SQL query.

Do you know if there is any documentation to explain the data design in the ProductProperties table? - there are a lot of fields I can't relate to the custom properties dialog box.

I guess there could be some data conflicts if I used the tree interface concurrently - eg if I dragged a product to a different section this would be lost next time I imported a new custom properties table. I'd have to choose one method and stick with it.

Hope this makes some sense.

Thanks,
Lizzie.

[harlequin]

hi chris, to add a little more fire, i cant tell you how much i want this feature..

a few of our clients have over 5000 products with lots of customvars etc...

also, extremely high on my wishlist is the fact that when importing an excel sheet or d.base, you can specify Section Text which if formatted like

Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3

gives the product a section to live in..

after you have imported, and link back to that table whether excel or d.b. there is no place to use the valuable section placement data these guys have painstakingly created and maintain...

i.e. new products onto the database/sheet are dumped ungraciously into the 'unallocated products' section..

the information is available on the database to put them into their correct sections and it would remove on massive job for our guys....

also, in the same vein, products removed or deleted from the sheet/d.b. DONT get removed from actinic...

Jan has created rather a nice query that does the deletion part for us and it is easily modified, maybe she will sell it to Actinic ;)

if these two things were sorted out, combined with jans mole, look at the new scenario for my guys who may change hundreds of products a day..

1. input product data into database as normal....then sit back..
2. our macro runs every hour to convert his database columns into the style that actinic wants. easy.
3. Jans 'mole' does four things per hour
a) refreshes actinics link to d.b bringing new products in
b) runs her special query to delete products not in d.b anymore
c) uploads the site
d) downloads any new orders
4. Because of other moles, client goes to Printer and see's his invoices printed, his shipping address labels printed, his stock levels maintained etc etc... and he simply has a tick box at the end of the day for orders shipped.

so, what we have achieved is almost mirroring his expensive epos system to his website with no extra effort required on his part AT ALL, we can use macros very well here.

his website appears almost dynamic to his customers, products will be on and off the website within an hour, or however long they specify the macro to run..

the clients themselves will continue to be very careful about the entries for the database knowing a website will be generated from it...

following from that last paragraph, heres another scenario from the same case..

this guy of mine, this is his first import into actinic and therefore its good that we can name his sections on the import...so....he has just spent the last 3 weeks going through all of his existing database time and time again to get the import correct and generate a lovely website....so far so good...

from there on in, he may as well ignore the section text in his database, what a waste of them learning to be careful with their sectioning, and as i say, a little bizarre...

then, even after setting up the section on his database, he will have to manually go into actinic all the time and sit and drag and drop potentially hundreds of products into their correct sections, cross referencing all the time exactly which section to put it in when he has already told his database once where it should live...

THAT is the only thing holding up true integration between his Epos and his Actinic.

hope this helps the issue..

there is other stuff actually i want on the import but will save it for later on to explain..

steve q.
harlequin domains
www.harlequindomains.com
0800 0832077

[cdicken]

Thanks Steve

I have passed this onto the Developers

[gearoidg]

Yeah I kinda did something like that for our clients, 7000+ products

I linked the actinic DB and their DB and ran some queries that I cooked up on bought then ran an import and it was fine. I reckon all people need to do is to start playing around with access a bit more. Once you backup the database it doesnt really matter what happens, play around with it as much as possible and a good few items reveal themselves,
I only wish it was possible to add more details in the shopping cart though
Gearoid

[harlequin]

addition: after the post above i have chatted with jan a while about this and we have come up with macro/mole/querys that actually do all this .... wooooohooooo im well chuffed.... only she is away for a week or two now.... im missing her already hahaha..

i still hope actinic sort it out 'naturally' so to speak...

steve

ps. can someone give me a simple explanation and or very simple example of a flat file and a hierarchical file...im embarressed to say i still dont know the difference, maybe when i know i shall start to use that and my other issues will sort themselves out...

thanks in advance

[Ben]

Hi Steve

Sample import files are in the local site directory. They are:
SampleFlatImportFile.csv
SampleHierarchicalCatalogImportFile.txt

Ben

[harlequin]

haha, i want you to make it real simple for us all and post a few lines of example....i know what a flat file is, but when i open up a sample actinic hierarchical, even at 1024x768, with a whole column page width, i cannot see all of the contents of the first cell, never mind all what is going on..

i was kinda thinking a simple post, explaining the concept, not just for me but in case anyone else benefitted from knowing the actual rules as it were, not just a sample file and work it out for yourself..

cheers if you can..

[Ben]

Oh, alright ;)

Hierarchical importing is useful for importing product variants, shipping charges, brochure pages, customer accounts and price scheules as well as custom properties.

The basic structure is made up of header records that define the field name, and data records for the values. Header records start with 'Header:' and then the header keyword - data records start with the keyword. So for instance ...

Header:Section,Section name
Header:Product,Short description,Price
Section,Basic Products
Product,Calculator,851
Product,Bunch of Flowers,2128
End,Section

... describes the section name and product name and price for the first section in the default catalogue. The 'End,Section' line simply specifies the end of the section or sub-section.

Further information is held in the Help files, although I always recommend exporting your own catalog and examining the resulting file if you want to understand it.

HTH

[pinbrook]

Ok....

I want to import 2 customvars where do they go in the import file?

Custom Properties MUST be written BEFORE any being referenced in a product. A warning message will alert you to this requirement. It is strongly advised to write Valid Custom Properties as the first rows of the import file to simplify the structure and avoid import errors (e.g. insertion by mistake within a section). What does this mean?

if the example below is my file

Header:Section,Section name
Header:Product,Short description,Price
Section,Basic Products
Product,Calculator,851
Product,Bunch of Flowers,2128
End,Section

and my calculator and bunch of flowers has a customvar called commission

[Jan]

To include customvars in an import file then you need to add these headers, in the header section

Header:CustomProperty,Custom Property Name,Value,Use as CUSTOMVAR,Is Searchable,Is File Name,Use File Content
Header:ValidCustomProperty,Name,Type

Then for each customvar you want to define for a product add an entry before the product details to 'declare' the customvar

ValidCustomProperty,"Commission",2

Then for each product you can add the customvar details

CustomProperty,Commission,"70",0,1,0,0

Regards,