IMPORTING A FILE

Hi Allynj,
From where u are importing an excel file? are you u sing an smart service to export the sql data in to excel file?

Good Morning,

We are importing an excel from my desktop .

This is a brand new application we are being tasked to build so we have defined the data types (Field Names) for our proposal table. We have not exported any data into an excel file. we are not using a smart service.

We did the following steps:
Created excel file with field names we identified when we create the data type (Proposals0
we zipped file
Went to admin console
selected import
attached file
and it ran.. and stated 0 records were added.

I am clear we are missing something :)

Thank You in advance for all of your feedback .. we are struggling with a few different things over here.

I assume when you say "admin console" you are referring to the phpMyAdmin interface for the database. You may have some luck with the phpMyAdmin documentation. docs.phpmyadmin.net/.../import_export.html

Can you clarify as to exactly what you're trying to import and why? And where exactly in the Admin Console you're attempting to do this?

FWIW, The "Import" button appearing in the top bar of the Admin Console, as far as I'm aware, just imports saved site admin settings, and would not be expected to recognize the contents of an arbitrary Excel file you've put in a ZIP package. And has nothing to do with creation or management of data types.

Mike,

So I am a beginner in appian and we are building an application from scratch.. and we were able to find documentation on importing and it so happened to be in the admin console..

so no real reason why we choose there.. trial and error:)

Thanks for the response to my second question - though I was hoping for more detail on what exactly you *are* trying to do - I assume by now that your attempt is to create a CDT / data type, but still not 100% clear on this.  Lots of people here would love to help you but we can't really do that if we can't actually figure out what you're trying to accomplish.

2 followup points:

• The admin console is full of really neat and powerful functionality.  My best advice, however, is to not "trial and error" with ANYTHING in there without fully understanding it, except maybe the "Users" tab, where you add and manage user accounts / info - there's only so much you can break in that one.
• If you're trying to create any sort of application objects, data types, etc, you should be pretty much only focusing on the Appian Designer console, found at http://<yoursite>/suite/design.  Here you can create a "new application" (name it whatever you want at first) and then add objects, data types, rules, etc, via the "New" button.  You can create a data type from scratch here - and probably the fastest way for now would be to manually copy across the field names in your desired data type.  If you need the data type to eventually connect to a database table, there are more in-depth instructions for that elsewhere.

Mike.

So we are working in Appian Designer and we have 3 data types one for proposals, user , and solicitations.. We want to be able to Import a File based on the fields we have identified in the proposal Table:

ID (System Generated)
Display ID
Proposal Summary etc.

The goal is to take a file full of meta data import the file into the proposal table , we just found out that we would also need to parse the the file. That we will receive a pdf file.. with multiple documents..

I am sure this is not basic appian functionality and that a plugin of some sort will be required..

If you want to import the actual data types themselves from an external file, you will need to use an XSD file with your data type definition - more information on that can be found here: docs.appian.com/.../Custom_Data_Types.html

Then in order to import actual data from a PDF or any other sort of file, i.e. to be stored in a process instance or (preferably) in a database, you'd need to build an appian process model to pull and parse information. I believe there are workable plugins to pull filled data from a standard fillable PDF, but I have less experience with that. Or if you can use excel files, that's probably more workable - it still requires a process but might be more flexible.

This was very helpful... I feel like i am in an ocean learning how to swim:)

This was very helpful... I feel like i am in an ocean learning how to swim:)