Help with importing referenced objects in Excel Importer

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I am trying to upload another file into my app with data that references previously uploaded objects in my app.  For example entity 1 has an attribute named material number and i want to upload a new file where I will name the entity Location with attributes of Material number and location.  I want to be able to do a search in a listview of entity 1 for the location that is associated with that location which it is recognizing through my import of entity 2.  Im struggling a little with the documentation of the excel importer on how to reference different entities.   My domain model in this case is entity 1 has a [1-*] association because each object in entity 1 can have multiple associated locations with it.  
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1 answers
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Zach,

I think what you are trying to accomplish is:

  • upload a spreadsheet with 3 columns:  material_number, Material and location
  • associate each Location with the Purchases entity by matching material_number (you might also need to create a Purchases object if one doesn’t exist for a material_number)

Is that accurate?

If so, I would recommend that you import the spreadsheet into an interim entity, lets call it LocationImport, which contains all 3 columns.  Then you can build a microflow that will create Locations from this data and match it to Purchases.  This approach gives you a lot more control and visibility into the matching process and is the best practice that I follow with these kinds of requirements.  If your spreadsheet has a large number of rows, you could set up the microflow to process it in batches and keep track of which objects have been processed already.

Hope that helps,

Mike

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