Import Sets: How to check ignored records?

[felixs]

Hello all,

New admin here, one of my first projects is to import some data into one of our databases and update a particular field. Pretty straight forward. Running through it in our Test instance before moving to Dev. Ive successfully created an import set with no errors. However there were 3 ignored records. I understand there could be lots of reasons for this. However, for now, Id just like to know:

1. A way to check which records were ignored specifically

2. Any log record stating why or give a clue as to why it was ignored.

3. If there is nothing that is done automatically baseline. Is there a way I can attach a script to the import set in order to process a log or a debug message as to what record failed/ignored?

I tried checking the Import Log (from the "Next steps..." section) but it really didnt give me any info that would help me. Even checked the related link of "Show Log Entries" and nothing useful there (from what I could decipher).

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Chuck Tomasi]

If you go to System Import Sets> Import Sets, you can find the "staging table" where your data was brought in along with the stats of what happened to it. Open the record and at the bottom you can see what happened while the transform ran and a second related list with each of the rows and what they did.

This is from an EXTREMELY limited import set, but you get the idea.

Import Sets - ServiceNow Wiki

[felixs]

Hi Chuck,

This is incredibly helpful! However... it doesnt show me the ignored records from the import. So my xls file has 65534 records and SN via this method only reports a total of 65530.

Still gives me an incredibly helpful amount of information, which im sure Ill use in the future, but doesnt show the ignored records from the import (kinda makes sense). Any other thoughts?

[Chuck Tomasi]

Do you know which records they were? Is there a way to do a quick comparison? Perhaps blank lines? Header rows?

Is there any chance you can share the spreadsheet here (stripping out any confidential information of course) or private message me and we can arrange an exchange so it's not posted publicly, if you prefer? Just throwing some options out to try and help.

[felixs]

Thanks for the update. I took a look at the data file again and found 2 things:

1. Header row will not be imported (which is good)

2. There was an empty row

So that accounts for 2 rows out of the 3 ignored. The next best thing I guess would be to look at the import set data and export it to an xls or csv file and compare it to the original data set. I could compare it either through some functions in   excel or using a comparison tool.

Ok,.. Im back from trying that. So I learned a few things, maybe it'll help someone in the future.

1. Be careful of the type of data you assign in your SN tables. Our "Asset ID" is set to type String and not Integer. Although this may be helpful, once you are sorting a table in SN, the values (that are actually numbers but stored as String type) will not be sorted how you expect them to.

2. I tried fixing the data after export from SN for comparison with the original, but have moved on as its only 3 records, Ive found 2 of them, and it is way more time spent than actually worth. Hopefully my other data imports will not be as bad.

Thank you again for offering to further troubleshoot the process. Until I find out if there is a better way, I will be using the methods you described. Thanks!