I had posted this in a different way before. As I continue to remember things and find my way around Epicor, I need to lean on the experiences of others so I don’t go trying to reinvent the wheel.
I am trying to find out if anyone out there has loaded data from Excel to Epicor tables. I want some guidance as to which is the best way to about doing this. Which is the better tool to use for this? A BAQ or the Data Management Tool. I will be using whatever suggestion I get for the first time in a while.
Sometimes the DMT entry doesn’t exists for your need. For example, I wanted to import Calendar Exceptions in bulk but could not find an entry in DMT. So I build a dashboard and, in version 10, there’s an option to import directly from Excel:
Keep in mind that DMT uses the business logic behind the scenes to do inserts. If you bypass that and upload directly, you could be bypassing important business logic. So I would state, “it depends” on what you’re bulk importing.
Another way we’ve done is to use the REST API. Definitely a much bigger learning curve if you’re not familiar with code, but it allows us to effectively pretend all the data is getting entered from the front end.
Depending on what you’re doing, if you’re working in a grid you can copy from Excel and paste insert into the grid. This will update the records. We use this to upload work completed from our laser into labor entry.
Generally speaking DMT is the safest way. DMT uses all the same business logic that the UI would and any BPMs you’ve added. Epicor doesn’t officially support direct SQL inserts (or any direct SQL changes for that matter). API would also work but you’d have to write something to use it.
