Import Project Items

This feature allows for the importing of Project Item information into the Unanet system. This import allows adding new items or updating existing items. Delete functionality is not provided in this import.

Roles

This screen is available to users having any of the following roles: Project Manager, Project Manager Alternate, Administrator or P&R Administrator.

License

This feature is available with the Project Financials family of Unanet licenses.

Performance Tip Note: Depending on the number of users in your installation and other factors such as the overall performance of your platform, the activity of importing one or many files may take up to several minutes. Should this be the case with your installation, you may want to consider running these processes at non-peak times to minimize database contention.

Import File Record Layout

IMPORTANT: Note that there are multiple places within this documentation that say you MUST use double quotes for the strings in your import. If you are working in Excel, Excel will provide the double quotes and thus you do not need to add them in manually. Manually adding double quotes within Excel would result in multiple sets of double quotes in the resulting .csv file and thus cause an error (should you attempt to import that resulting file). Please see Excel Tips for more information.

		Field Header Name	Required/Comments
1	A	Item_Code	ALWAYS REQUIRED. This is the unique item code. It must be active and have rate(s).
2	B	Project_Org_Code	ALWAYS REQUIRED. This code uniquely identifies the Organization to which the project belongs. This value must match an existing Project Organization Code value defined in your system.
3	C	Project_Code	ALWAYS REQUIRED. This Project Code identifies the project that is associated to the item. This value must match an existing Project Code value defined in your system.
4	D	Bill_By	This field indicates whether the billable amount for the item code will be calculated based on Bill Rates or Markup. The valid values are "R" (for Rates) or "M" (for Markup). If not provided, it is set to the master item bill_by field.
5	E	UOM	CONDITIONALLY REQUIRED. Required if custom_rates is "Y". The specified Unit of Measure (UOM) must be associated with the item in Admin >> Setup. If custom_rates is "N" and item exists for project, and UOM is provided, then all rates will be removed for that UOM; if UOM is blank, then all rates for the item will be removed.
6	F	Custom_Rates	CONDITIONALLY REQUIRED. Required if UOM is specified. Can be "Y", "N", or blank.
7	G	Effective_Date	CONDITIONALLY REQUIRED. This field is required when Custom_Rate is "Y". This field represents the date a particular rate is to become effective. Ignored if no custom rate for this item. Recommended date format: yyyy-MM-dd See Allowable Date Formats for more options. You can also use the value "BOT" (beginning of time)
8	H	Bill_Rate	This field can be zero, positive, or negative. The default value is 0. Ignored if no custom rate for this item. Format NUMBER (15,5) -- for example "1234567890.12345 ".
9	I	Bill_Markup	This field can be zero, positive, or negative. The default value is 0. The allowed range of values is -999.99 - 999.99. Ignored if no custom rate for this item. Format NUMBER (5,2) -- for example "123.12".
10	J	Cost_Rate	This field can be zero, positive, or negative. The default value is 0. Ignored if no custom rate for this item. Format NUMBER (15,5) -- for example "1234567890.12345 ".

Note: Check out the Unanet Data Model for specific field data types, lengths, and other attributes.

Import File Format

The file to import must be saved in a comma delimited format. The fields can be enclosed in double quotes -- which would be particularly necessary should the data being imported contain commas.

Importing a Sub-Set of Columns using a Field Header Record

If you are not using the default column layout sequence as defined above, you must include a header record (prefixed with an asterisk *), containing the column Header Names for those columns you are including in the import file (to indicate what data is contained in each column). The specific Header Names for each column are listed in the table above.

Example:

*Item_Code,Project_Org_Code,Project_Code,Bill_By
item_1,Org_1,Proj_1,M

Excel Template

You can create the comma delimited import file with any number of tools. For those interested in using an Excel spreadsheet to create the file, you can download an Excel Template with predefined headers.

See the Excel Tips regarding the use of double quotes and more.

Import Screen

The Import Project Items screen looks like:

Field Descriptions:

Field	Description
Type of Import	Select the appropriate import type from the list of available types of imports.
File to Import	Enter (or browse for) the file that you would like to import.
Output Options	Specify the level of detail included in the output.

The import process is triggered by pressing the Import button. All Warnings and Error messages are written to the screen and can then be saved if desired. While some line items may be found invalid and rejected, the remaining line items will be successfully imported and saved in the database. The rejected line items will be written out to a file on the Unanet server as well as displayed at the bottom of the Import results page. The rejected record file name will be the import name (from the Type of Import drop-down on the Admin>> Import page) , concatenated with a space and "Errors.csv" (e.g., Item - Master Errors.csv, Alternate.csv, etc.). The file will be placed in the Unanet temporary directory (which is defined by the Temp Directory (Fully Qualified Directory Name) (unanet.temp_directory) Unanet property). You can also click on the Download the error file link at the bottom of the Import results page (sample image follows).