Andrew Karasev

SAP Business One Data Import: Items and Prices overview for Consultant

Advanced techniques in SAP BO Data Transfer Workbench integration scenarios.  This method allows you to establish ongoing integration from such systems as Microsoft CRM, Oracle custom database, Lotus Notes Domino, etc.

If you are SB1 consultant, you probably know how to import data by filling Excel templates for such objects as Item, Price, Warehouse QTY.  This is very popular method, however try to do more complex integration logic: you need to discontinue old items and replace them with new items, where you need to take the price from old item and associate it with the new replacement.  Something like this is definitely possible in Excel, if you are able to program Excel Database connection and query.  Well, try something more complex – when you have variable item classes and for each class price update has unique formulae.  In this small publication we do not agitate you to purchase additional third party tools, such as iBolt or do SAP Business One SDK integration programming – we will be explaining how to do complex data import in SAP Business One Workbench

1.       ODBC source.  ODBC is a way more flexible, comparing to Excel template based CSV files.  If you choose ODBC connection – you can create SQL View as the base and this SQL view in turn could be of heterogeneous nature (pulling data from Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Oracle, Pervasive SQL, Ctree, Microsoft Access database, tab delimited text file to give you the idea)

2.       SQL DTS Package method.  Assuming that we are taking ODBC route – you can decide to mark records, already integrated by update script, which could be part of MS SQL Server DTS package

3.       SB1 2007A Data Transfer Workbench limitations.  Please, note that currently SAP doesn’t support batch file and data integration scheduling, however if you are using CSV files – batch file should work fine

4.       Items and Pricelist.  We recommend you to try the following approach – create SQL View, which returns data in the same format as Excel template for oItem object.  Please, pay special attention to field names – they should coincide with the names in Excel template (however you do not have to provide all the field names – only required and important in your SAP B1 inventory module).  Item Price is dependant object to the Item in Item import cluster

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