These are a couple of “little things” I often show in our platform classes that often (surprisingly) er. . . surprise people about imports:
- First off, did you know that from any table. . . you can build a “template spreadsheet” for that table? (this is one of those “blew my mind” things when I first learned it. . . after I’d already been using imports for about 5 years. . . )
- Next up: Reference fields. . . when it comes to field mapping, I never used to think about “referential integrity”. Like, what happens if I import a bunch of users (Santa Clause, Ned Stark, Sauron, you know, those kindsa people) into the User table with Locations (North Pole, Winterfell, Mordor) that don’t exist in the locations table?
- Well, here’s the cool part: That’s actually up to YOU!
- You can tell the system whether you want it to Ignore the reference, Update the referenced table (i.e. Location table) or reject the import that has a reference that’s not already in the other table. . .
- In the Field Map for reference fields, there’s a “Choice action”
- Create - creates a new record in the referenced table (so. . . “North Pole” will be in the locations table)
- In the Field Map for reference fields, there’s a “Choice action”
- Ignore - will ignore the referenced field if there isn’t a reference to connect it to in the referenced table (so. . . Ned Stark will go to the user’s table. . . but alas. . . Winterfell is NOT coming to the user table OR the Location table)
- Reject - will BLOCK the import to BOTH the User table and the Location table (because who wants Mordor or OASIS as a location you’d have to go to?)
Well, there you have it - hopefully some platform tips you might have missed. Do let me know if this is helpful, and/or if I should add some more 🙂
