Online Help | Desktop App

Field Mapping page

On this page, you set up the field mapping. The page consists of two panes, while the top pane is just the preview pane.

Preview pane

The Preview pane displays the first 20 records of your source data in a grid. Each row corresponds to a particular record, each column contains values of the particular field. Check the displayed data to make sure that it is interpreted correctly; if not, go back and change some of the previous settings.

If the first row of your data contains field names, select the First row contains field names check box.

NOTE: The Preview pane displays the first 20 records to help you with the mapping. The Import tool will import all your external records, not only the displayed ones.

If you want to hide the Preview pane, click the grip bar below the pane. To show the Preview pane, click the grip bar again.

Mapping pane

Mapping pane - lists the destination object fields to be mapped. Each destination field is displayed as a row with values in the following columns:

  • Destination Field - the name of the destination object field.

  • Input Column - the source data column mapped the destination object field. To map the destination field to a source data column, click in a cell and open the drop-down list with source data columns.

  • Field Type - the destination field type. We recommend that you map a destination field to an input column of the same field type. Otherwise, errors may occur during the import.

  • Mapped - displays the check mark when the mapping to the destination object field is specified. To remove the mapping, clear the check box.

Legend pane

Legend pane - displays the legend: mandatory fields are displayed in bold, regular fields are displayed without formatting changes, and the foreign key fields are displayed in italic.

Applying the default mapping

If the first row contains field names, you can apply the default mapping. This means the destination fields will be mapped to the source columns with the same names.

To apply the default mapping:

  1. Make sure the First row contains field names check box is selected.

  2. Right-click any column in the Preview pane and click Default Mapping.

Defining custom field mapping

To manually specify mapping for the source data:

For each source data column you want to import, do one of the following:

  • In the Preview pane, right-click a column and then click the desired destination field (already mapped destination fields are marked with the check mark).

  • In the Mapping pane, click the Input Column cell corresponding to the destination field, then select the desired input column from the drop-down list.

Once you map a field, a check mark appears in the Mapped box. You can remove mapping by clearing the Mapped check box. Only mapped fields will be imported.

NOTE: You can map multiple destination fields to a single source column.

IMPORTANT: To proceed with the import, you must map all the required destination fields; these fields are shown in the Mapping pane in bold.

To import values of user-defined fields:

When the destination object has user-defined fields (UDFs), those fields are also displayed in the Mapping pane and can be mapped just as other destination fields.

NOTE: If your source data contains a custom lookup list and your destination object has a UDF of the Lookup type, map that UDF to the column containing your lookup list, and the Import tool will import all items of your custom lookup list together with other object attributes. For details on UDFs, see Working with user-defined fields.

To import hierarchical objects (Projects, Locations, or Organizations) with their hierarchy:

Locations, Organizations, and Projects are hierarchical Alloy Navigator objects. To import an hierarchical object with its hierarchy, the source column must contain text delimited with back slashes ("\"). The Import tool will interpret this text as the path to the object in the hierarchy.

Map the following destination fields to the source column:

  • Projects: the Name field.

  • Organizations: the Parent field.

  • Locations: the Parent field.

When the source data contains the path to an object that does not yet exist in Alloy Navigator, the Import tool will create a new object during the import.