Importing/Exporting Unit of Measure Definitions

Formatting the Data

The import allows you the opportunity to do a mass import of units of measure. While Exporting provides a way for you to share your Units Of Measure (UOM) with other Fishbowl users and/or other applications which can read the data. The UOM import file is a CSV file formatted in a way that Fishbowl knows what to do with the data. If you don't have a file that was exported from Fishbowl, this can be easiest to do using a spreadsheet program.

Read only UOMs cannot be updated through this import.

All fields will be one of two types:

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
Numeric - A decimal number greater than or equal to zero with up to four digits after the decimal point. The number must not have thousands' separators in it - 1234.56 is a valid number, while 1,234.56 is not.

CSV fields used In the UOM file

Column Name

Type

Description

Name

Text
(30 chars)

The name of the Unit of Measure (UOM).
Required

Details

Text
(30 chars)

The details for this UOM.

Abbrev

Text

The abbreviation of this UOM. Abbreviations of more than 4 characters may get truncated in reports. 10 characters maximum length.

ReadOnly

Text

"true" if you don't want users to have the ability to change this UOM. "false" if you do want to be able to edit it. This can only be updated by the administrator.

Active

Text

"true" if you want users to have the ability to use this UOM.

UomTypeID

Text

The type ID for this UOM according to the following:

ID	Type
1	Count
2	Weight
3	Length
4	Area
5	Volume
6	Time

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.
Commas are used to separate fields
Text values are surrounded by double quotes