Importing/Exporting Bill of Materials Instructions

The format of the Data

The import allows you the opportunity to do a mass update of bill of materials (BOM) instructions. Instructions can be added, modified, or removed from the bill of materials. Exporting this information makes it available for another Fishbowl installation to get your bill of materials instructions. You use a CSV file formatted in a way that Fishbowl knows what to do with the data. This is easiest to do with a spreadsheet program.

The CSV file may have more columns in it than the ones listed below. All extra fields will be ignored. If there is an error on any line of the update file, the entire update will fail allowing you to easily fix the problem and rerun the update.

All lines affecting one bill of materials must be grouped together.

All fields will be one type:

Text - A textual value. May contain any character, but if it contains a line break, comma or double quote, it must be wrapped with double quotes on both ends. If a field is wrapped, all text must be inside the double quotes. Double quotes in the text value must be doubled to import properly

CSV Fields Describing the Bill of Materials Instructions

Column Name	Type	Description
BOM NUMBER	Text	The number for the Bill of Materials. *Required*
STEP NAME	Text	The name of the instruction step. *Required*
STEP DESCRIPTION	Text	The description for the instruction step.
STEP DETAILS	Text	Additional details for the instruction step.
URL	Text	A URL pointing to more information.
CF-	Text (30 chars)	The instruction's custom field value. The name of this column is CF- followed by the name of the custom field. There is one custom field column for each of the instruction's custom fields.

Creating a CSV file

In order to import your data, you must first export it to a comma separated values (CSV) text file. All major spreadsheet programs can export data in this format. If you do not know how to export your data to a CSV file, please refer to the documentation of your spreadsheet program.

When exporting to CSV format, make sure to verify the following:

The data is formatted properly (see the first section)
The file must contain column names in the first row, using the column names in the table above.
Each instruction step to be added or updated is on its own line
Commas are used to separate fields
Text values are surrounded by double quotes