Text File Importing and Exporting
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Text File importing enables you to:


  1. Import Jobs, both new jobs and changes to jobs, to the schedule
  2. Import Job Updates which are updates to jobs with times and/or quantities
  3. Import Inventory which is used as a lookup table for Material Requirements. 
  4. Import Employees Employees can optional be used for reporting time against jobs


The import files are text files and must be in the correct import format. 


Exporting enables you to Export Jobs/Operations to a text file in the same format as importing (see Import/Export Job File Format for the DMS text file format).  You can also export the information currently in the Manufacturing Orders grid using Export Grid Contents.


Retain and Merge Settings is used for making changes to existing jobs when importing jobs.  Retain and merge specifies which fields may be changed during an import and which fields cannot be changed.


As well as importing and exporting data in the DMS file format, DMS will import and export data in the old RSS 4.7 and 4.8 formats for backward compatibility.  For RSS files formats, please refer to your RSS documentation.


All import fields are string values. Each import record must start with a record identifier so that DMS can determine the type of record being imported.


Unless otherwise stated, the following are the range of values permitted and the standard format:


Big integer (INT64)

An integer number.  Internal IDs assigned by SQL can range from 1 to 9 quintillion (9,223,372,036,854,775,807).  For quantities, number can be from 1 to 9,999,999,999.

Boolean

True or False

Date Time

Date in the format YYYYMMDD without date separators.

Defaults

Defaults for items are set within DMS using “Terms & Settings” under the menu category “Tables”.

Float

7 significant digits (i.e. 99999.99)

Integer

0 to  2 billion (2,147,483,647)

Memo

A string with a maximum length of 1 GB (about 1 billion characters).  Practically speaking, a memo field can hold several paragraphs of text.  To add a CR LF to memo text, use <br>.  The import converts the characters <br> to CR LF and the export automatically replaces all CR LF with <br>.  Note <br> must be all lower case.  (The <br> tag is a standard HTML tag that means to inserts a single line break. )

String x

Where x is the maximum number of alphanumeric characters in the string


Fields in a text line are separated by a tilde (~).  Blank fields are specified by two tildes in a row (i.e. ~~). For example, the start of a job record SJB, order number WO123, a blank Order ID, part number AA-BB-DD, etc, would be:


SJD~WO123~~AA-BB-DD…