The Import Tool

  • To be able to make use of the Import Tool, a user must have (or be a member of a group that has) the daImport operations privilege specified for any tables that will be involved in the import.
  • As the Import Tool emulates the manual creation or editing of records in EMu, a user also requires any Operations (add and update e.g. daInsert, duEdit) and Record Level Security permissions that are required when adding or updating records manually.

    For example, if a user does not have permission to:

    • Add a record to a module (the daInsert permission) or update a record in a module (duEdit), no record will be added to or updated in that module when using the Import Tool.
    • Add a value to a Lookup List field (specified using the Lookup Registry entry), the import will fail for any record that involves the addition of a value to that Lookup List field.

The Import Tool is used to batch import new records and to update existing records in EMu. The Import Tool emulates the manual creation and editing of records with the result that records added or updated through the Import Tool are valid, more complete and far cleaner than if they are simply batch uploaded, as they are during the migration of legacy data for instance.

What does this mean? When a record is created manually (or edited) in EMu a range of processes are involved. For example:

  • Default values can be added to the record.
  • Unique values can be added (an incremental number, for instance), and values that should be unique are checked for uniqueness.
  • A check that mandatory fields have been completed can be performed.
  • Auto-fill fields will be auto filled.
  • Lookup List checks are performed.
  • Any additional on-save processes specified by the System will be performed when the record is saved.

None of these processes is invoked when data is batch loaded into EMu during the migration of legacy data. Data migration maps values from a field in the data source to a field in EMu and while this is a quick way to get large amounts of data into EMu, it can result in records that are incomplete or that contain invalid data.

As the Import Tool emulates the manual creation or edit of records in EMu, all of the processes listed above are performed when this tool is used to add records or update them in EMu.