Import Skills

This feature allows for the importing of Skill information into the Unanet system, categorizing the skills by skill type. This information is used in conjunction with the Skill Types, Skill Levels, and Person Skill associations.

Roles

This screen is available to users having any of the following roles: Administrator and P&R Administrator

License

This feature is available with any Unanet edition.

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.

Topics covered on this help page include:

Import File Record Layout (field by field descriptions)
Import File Format (generic rules and Excel spreadsheet tips)
Excel Template (spreadsheet template containing column headings)
Import Screen (invoking the import via the user interface)

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	Skill	ALWAYS REQUIRED. Unique skill name. You can use the skill import to update a skill name by supplying the following syntax in this field. "!RENAME!,old_skill,new_skill" -- this entire string must be enclosed in double quotes. For example, if you were attempting to change: 1) Existing Skill "CPlusPlus" to "C++", the import file would include: "!RENAME!,CPlusPlus,C++" Maximum Length: 50 characters
2	B	Skill_Type	ALWAYS REQUIRED. If the Skill Type value you are trying to import is not an existing valid value, the entire record will be rejected.
3	C	Description	This field is used to supply a description of the Skill being imported. You can use the !BLANK! tag to remove an existing value. Maximum Length: 128 characters
4	D	Delete	This field can be used to trigger the system to delete a skill level. In order for the delete to happen, you must include the following text string !DELETE! in this field. You will not be permitted to delete a skill level that has been referenced elsewhere in the system.

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:

#Delete example
*Skill,Skill_Type,Delete
C++,Programmer,!DELETE!

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 Skills 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).