Import difficulties

[jbeezer]

I recently imported 2000+ employees to 20 sites (OTM 2.1) using CSV files. Now that I have finally finished that time consuming task, I notice that leading zeros aren't imported correctly from CSV files. Leading zeros are ommitted from the CSV file when you save them it seems, atleast in my case. Anyways I then did some testing and when I import using excel 97 & 2000 format it seems to work fine, and keep the leading zeros where they are needed. They are needed for the 5 digit UserIDs and DeptartmentIDs so that it will be consistent accross multiple directories so that syncronizing with LDAP (in the future) will be easy. Now that you have the background information here is the real issue at hand. So I already have 2000 employee in each OTM system but about half of those have less than a 5 digit UserID number which means that if I was to import the XLS sheet with the leading zeros it would think that about half of employees were new because even though it would already have that empoyees record, it would think it was a new employee because the UserID number was now 03491 instead of the 3491 (which it already has a record for). I messed around a little bit with Alternate key because I think that is what I need to somehow use, but I'm just not sure how to successfully make it so when I import this new XLS it will use something else such as Email address, or a custom attribute (such as NT login name) as the search key. And then from that it would update the UserID, replacing 3491 with 03491 for example. Any ideas how to accomplish this? Thanks in advance.

 

[johnpoole]

the more you learn about otm the least you'll like it, it's far to fat and sloopy far a text editor.. i do the same thing with script files using excel, word and procomm aspect. i an't find a place to chose a format that saves any msd (even 0), i've given up on otm because if i take time to do it the slow way, and learn their software like i did mat5 and then mat6, it will be blown away by something fatter and slower that is even worse to move around in.

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc