Import Assignment

Privilege Needed: Administrator or Project Manager

This feature allows Administrators and Project Managers to import Project or Task Assignment information into the Unanet system.

Within one assignment import file, an Administrator can import project or task assignment data for one to many projects and tasks, across multiple organizations if desired. The Project Manager version of the import restricts the importing of project and task assignment data to the specific org/project the Project Manager is accessing the assignment import on.

The table below shows all the fields that can be imported for assignments.

Field Name

Required/Description

Organization Code

ALWAYS REQUIRED. This code uniquely identifies the Organization to which this Assignment's project belongs. If the Organization you are trying to import does not already exist in the database, the entire record will not be imported. You will see the message: The organization "..." does not exist. Line....

Project Code

ALWAYS REQUIRED. This project code identifies the project to which this Assignment belongs. The project code is unique within an Organization. That is, an Organization can not have two projects with the same Project Code. Different Organizations, however, can have projects with the same Project Code. This is the code that appears on most screens and reports. If the Project you are trying to import does not already exist in the database, the entire record will not be imported. You will see the message: The project "..." does not exist. Line....

Task Name

This field is only required if the Project you are working on supports task level assignments. The task name should be unique at the same level under a project. If a task is not a top-level task, you must include a comma separated list of each task starting at the top level down. The following is an example of a valid task tree and how you would reference each task using this import.

Task Tree	Access String
1. Car Repair	"Car Repair"
1.1 Tires	"Car Repair,Tires"
1.2 Paint	"Car Repair,Paint"
1.2.1 Prep work	"Car Repair,Paint,Prep work"
1.2.2 Patching	"Car Repair,Paint,Patching"
1.3 Engine	"Car Repair,Engine"
1.3.1 Tune-up	"Car Repair,Engine,Tune-up"
1.3.1 Rebuild	"Car Repair,Engine,Rebuild"

*See the EXCEL NOTE regarding the use of double quotes below.

Username

ALWAYS REQUIRED. Unique user name, for example LDINH or ldinh (It does not need to be capitalized.) This field can store up to 16 characters.

Delete Flag

This field is used to trigger the system to delete an assignment -- effectively unassigning a user from a project/task. In order for the delete to happen, you must have 'DELETE' in this field.

Bill Rate

This is the numeric bill rate that you would like to use for this assignment. If one is not given, then the user's bill rate will be used by default.

Cost Rate

This is the numeric cost rate that you would like to use for this assignment. If one is not given, then the user's bill cost will be used by default.

Bill Customer

This field allows you to specify a bill Customer (organization) to use for this assignment instead of the project's default organization. If the Organization you are trying to import is not in the database, the whole record will not be imported. You will see the message: The Organization "..." does not exist. Line....

Cost Customer

This field allows you to specify a cost Customer (organization) to use for this assignment instead of the person's default organization. If the Organization you are trying to import is not in the database, the whole record will not be imported. You will see the message: The Organization "..." does not exist. Line....

Labor Category

This field allows you to specify a Labor Category to use for this assignment. If you do not specify one, the person's Labor Category, if present, will be used by default. If the Labor Category you are trying to import is not in the database, the whole record will not be imported. You will see the message: The Labor Category "..." does not exist. Line ...

Location

This field allows you to specify a Location to use for this assignment. If you do not specify one, no Location will be used by default.

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.

Examples:

field1,field2,field3
"field1","field2","field3"
field1,"data containing commas (like this), should be double quoted",field3

Other file format requirements:

Each record must be in the same order as the table above
Note that some fields are always required
If you don't want to import information for a non-required field, just leave this field blank
If a given record does not contain a value for every field, the import will assume the remaining values are blank
The values for Organization, Project, and Parent Task must match existing entries in Unanet

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 click here to download an Excel Template with predefined headers and required fields.

EXCEL NOTE: the fields that start with ** are required fields.

EXCEL NOTE: Excel may add the double quotes around fields for you. If using the excel spreadsheet template -- note that excel will automatically put double quotes around fields that contain commas. Manually adding double quotes within excel would result in two sets of double quotes in the .csv file and thus cause an error on import.

EXCEL NOTE: When creating a comma delimited file using Excel, the saved ASCII text file will contain a header row. This row will be ignored by the import process and will not create any import warnings. The import process will ignore the header (as well as any other rows) that begin with: #ORG_CODE# or **

Import Assignment Screen

The Import Assignment screen simply looks like:

You select the file you would like to import and press the import button. The import process will commit all data that passes the necessary validations. That may result in some records being fully imported -- some may be partially imported -- and others may be rejected all together.

All Warnings and Error messages are written to the screen and can then be saved if desired.

Command Line Import

As an alternative to using the Import Screen described above, you can also invoke imports using the command line import functionality. This functionality allows you to invoke an import without accessing the Unanet system application (user interface). This may be useful if you would like to write an external process to extract data from an upstream system and programmatically load it into Unanet (without user intervention).

ImportDiff Utility

If you use the Unanet imports on a regular basis to keep your Unanet data in sync with an external system, and do not have the ability to export only new transactions from the external system, you might be feeding Unanet with a complete reload of data with each run. In this case, this type of utility may be useful, for example, to compare the contents of yesterday's load file with today's load file --- to identify on those new or changed records. This could be a useful step if you have very large data volumes. Check out the ImportDiff Utility for more information.

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