Data Import Tool improvement proposal ideas

ERPNext
1

These 2 days, after extensively testing upload item master, purchase order and sales order on the online trial run version, I got the following idea/proposal to further improve this great tool, welcome to comment

  1. Respect the filtering condition in the list view if the Data Import Tool page is switched from list view.
    at the moment, click the download with data button always download all the existing records available in the system, for updating existing data, normally user will filter out the to be updated list in the list view, then download the filtered out list into Excel for editing, then import again, otherwise, it is needed to manually filter out the unwanted data in Excel again.

  2. Allow saving the selected fields to be downloaded as selected_fields for future use, either by others if it is set as public, otherwise personally by the same user, also allow to set one of the selected_fields as default
    currently for download the data, user has to select required fields every time, which is tedious and avoidable

  3. do not check the read only mandatory fields when click “select mandatory”
    for example for download sales order, after click the “select mandatory” button, the 2 mandatory fields: price list currency and price list exchange rate , they are also read only fields are auto checked, but these 2 fields are not really mandatory fields, they are not meant to be imported! so it is better to not check/select it for “select mandatory”

  4. add a preview(or call it Check) button before the import button
    during import, there are times we will encounter various errors, it is most likely some field name or child doctype or child filed name misspelled or missing, if we can have the added feature to preview or check the first few records in a list view with mapped field names as column title, it will be easy to identify the error before actual import start and fix the error more quickly

  5. handle the default value for common fields such as company, price list and status
    when manually create a new sales order, the user do not need to manually input value into above mentioned fields , for batch import it is better to handle the default for those fields also

  6. fix one small bug: if the first run of the import encountered error, fixed the data issue in Excel file, then try to delete the old failed file in the browse file list, and browse to the target folder to select the updated Excel file again, the browser page does not response anymore, if manually refresh the page, then browse to select file, it will be OK.
    this is a small bug anyway.

this should be handled by Frappe framework as it is generic for all.

Anyone have similar findings or ideas?

1 Like
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Great observations and ideas.

We will factor this in when we touch the data import tool.

Alternatively, you could follow through and develop this yourself, if you are a developer, or inspire a developer (with motivational speeches or other more acceptable currency :)).

Don’t feel too compelled to act on it, just saying that in an Open Source environment your ideas have the best chance of implementation, if you follow through on them yourself. But if you can’t, that’s fine too! We appreciate your thoughts and ideas too.

Thanks

Jay

2 Likes
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Unfortunately I am not developer, but I can read / understand some of the program source code. I worked in SAP field for more than 15 years! I studied and followed OpenERP / Odoo for more than 6 years, only recently I tried ERPNext and joined the community , also watched the Friday’s live stream on youtube, I was inspired and encouraged by other proactive community members, I will try my best to contribute even though I am not either ERPNext user or service provider.

I would say ERPNext is very promising, sadly there is rarely training material and documentation in Chinese, and the translation on Chinese is not verified/ professional, for the next step, I will focus translate the user interface and the user manual, hopefully I can also start promote and organize workshops locally.

Again, thanks JayRam.

3 Likes
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Awesome! Do you want to head your City/Region/Country chapter?

Thanks for your contributions.

Welcome to ERPNext and we hope you will have a great experience with ERPNext.

Thanks

Jay

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Yes, I would like to be the local Chapter head, at least the city: Shenzhen, just joined as foundation member moment ago.

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It will be good if internal form validation can be done while importing the data using “data import tool”.