Last Kentico CMS Import Toolkit for 5.5 R2

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Kentico CMS 6 is almost ready to be shipped as well as the functionality of the Import toolkit application is being close for this version. Here is the last version that will be provided for version 5.5 R2.
Hi there,

For newbies: If you are new to the Import Toolkit application, I recommend you to read these two articles first to get the basic information about it:

Kentico CMS 5.5 Import Toolkit

Kentico CMS Import Toolkit 5.5R2 Alpha 2


First, I would like to thank everyone for your valuable feedback on our new Import Toolkit application. It helped us prepare a tool powerful enough to be ready to import almosts any data you can think of into your CMS database.

I have told some of you that the last preview will be ready at the beginning of the August, but since everyone was coming with suggestions and we have implemented lots of them, it took us some more time to close that.

Here is the last version that will be published for Kentico CMS 5.5 R2, the next one will be the final version shipped with Kentico CMS 6.

KenticoCMS_5_5R2_ImportToolkit.exe (2.7 MB)

What is new?

You can now import:
  • Document attachments (with binary data from DB or file system)
  • Object attachments (metafiles)
You now also have an explicit option to choose whether you want to import the objects as new, overwrite or skip existing objects. For documents, you are able to tell whether the imported documents under workflow should be automatically published.

All these selections can be done in Step 2, which, as you can see, is quite extended with all these new options:



If you select to ovewrite or skip existing objects, the existing ones are either found automatically (if the object has a code name or GUID), or you can specify a WHERE condition that will identify them as you define.




There are also smaller improvements like automatic trimming of text in case it is too long for the destination field, reseting the mapping to default, etc.

The application is also more robust and should handle more error scenarios, both typical and special that we could think of.

So this should be it, I hope I didn't forget anything. Consider the set of Import toolkit features final for Kentico CMS 6 and note that this Alpha version may still contain minor issues that will be fixed in version 6.

In case you have any additional feedback, let us know, we will appreciate it as always. Just please bear in mind that the newly suggested features will be part of Kentico CMS 7, not 6 ;-)

Enjoy!
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Martin Hejtmanek

Hi, I am the CTO of Kentico and I will be constantly providing you the information about current development process and other interesting technical things you might want to know about Kentico.

Comments

Martin Hejtmanek commented on

You were asking about the WHERE condition to identify the existing document, to update particular fields, you just set the mapping columns in the table above the where condition. If you identified the XML structure correctly and saw the preview of the source data, the XML is internally converted to DataSet from which the fields are available in macro resolver and available mapping columns. If still not clear, I suggest you contact our support with specific details of your data and desired behavior, and they will help you configure that.

Chris commented on

Thanks for your reply martin, but how do I reference the data field I am importing? As I said how to I update an existing record with DocumentName ='ABC' when my imported field is <doucmentname>ABC</documentname>.

I guess I don't understand how to reference the data being imported. Something like:
DocumentName = xml.documentname?

Martin Hejtmanek commented on

Hi Chris,

It's a standard where condition where you can use macros populated by your data, so it should be like:

DocumentName = '{% YourDocumentNameField %}'

Chris commented on

What is the format for the WHERE in Step 6? I would like to try to match DocumentName with my field documentname in the XML file I am importing.

JAdams commented on

Excellent tool! Saves us a lot of time.

One suggestion: If you load a profile, the Step 3 "Select source of data" step, that lets you select a CSV file, saves the path to the CSV in an absolute path instead of relative. After we change the path (since the production server paths are different than development machines) and when you click Next to get to the CSV settings/preview view, the start Row, Column, and Item separator fields get reset to defaults. Depending on the underlying data, it can be easy to miss this setting reset since most other settings in the import process are preserved in the profile, and the default of a comma separator can look almost like it parsed the CSV correctly in some cases.

I suggest that those CSV settings (starting Row and Columns, and Item separator) get saved even if the CSV path is changed. And/or better yet, save the CSV path relative to the location of the saved profile file.

Martin Hejtmanek commented on

I just reuploaded the installer, we fixed some minor issues (validation, import of users) and added support for culture of the source data.

Martin Hejtmanek commented on

Hi Rick,

Yes, that is true. unfortunately our developers and testers were so busy that we haven't had any time to review and test the changes to close it at that time, and we never got feedback from anyone that some of that is that important for someone that we should prioritize it somehow.

Rick commented on

Thank you very much, it was rather difficult to find this tool, but its awesome. What a shame it cant be published sooner (the digital certificate says it was signed month ago 8/15/2011) since we built our own tool:(