Translate instructions for Location Room import duplicate checking

Hi all,

I'm trying to update our location rooms and am having some difficulty understanding how duplicate checking works.

Can someone explain what the following means? My brain seizes up when trying to figure this maze out.

  1. External ID - If there already exists one or more rooms with the same external ID and location as a row that is being imported, those records will be updated from the spreadsheet. The name will be updated on those records.
  2. Name - If there already exists one or more rooms with the same name and location as a row that is being imported, those records will be updated from the spreadsheet. The external ID will be updated on those records.

Thanks a bunch,

Damon

Tags duplicate duplicate-checking location location-room
Asked by Damon Stennett on Fri 6/23/23 10:58 AM
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Answer (1)

This answer has been marked as the accepted answer
Mark Sayers Fri 6/23/23 11:05 AM

Hi Damon,

Essentially it's saying we perform duplication checking against both the External ID field and the Name field, specifically in that order.

If a row in your import file matches firstly on the External ID value of an existing Room, it will update that Room record with whatever other info is in the file that isn't already set to those values in the Room record currently, including potentially the Name field (if you provided a different Name value for it on your import file) since it wasn't used as the duplicate-prevention-matching field.

If a row in your import file matches instead on the Name value of an existing Room, it will update that Room record with whatever other info is in the file that isn't already set to those values in the Room record currently, including potentially the External ID field (if you provided a different External ID value for it on your import file) since it wasn't used as the duplicate-prevention-matching field.

Sincerely,
Mark Sayers
Sr Support Consultant, CS

No feedback
Hi Mark. Does this mean that to force an update of existing records by Name I would leave the external ID field blank? - Damon Stennett Fri 6/23/23 11:30 AM
Are you trying to *match* by the Name field?

Secondarily, are you needing particularly to change the External ID value on any of those room records? If yes for this, you'd still include the External ID column and give it the new value. - Mark Sayers Fri 6/23/23 11:33 AM
Hi Mark. When I did the initial import I was not aware that External ID was a primary key, since the instructions indicate that the Name and location are the must have values. Therefore we used External ID to hold our location inventory's own external ID, which is not unique to each record. We have hundreds of location rooms with the same external ID. One of my techs reported experiencing an issue where 1 record was updated many times in the preview to the import.

I'm trying to figure out how to accurately update our Location rooms

cheers,
Damon - Damon Stennett Fri 6/23/23 11:39 AM
And yes. Trying to match by Name field. - Damon Stennett Fri 6/23/23 11:41 AM
If the names would all be 100% unique, then yes I'd exclude the External ID values from the import file. Though I highly suggest testing first in Sandbox before you make a bulk import into Production, just to be sure your import works the way you are expecting it to (and then use only a small dataset so you can contain any potential issues better). - Mark Sayers Fri 6/23/23 11:48 AM