If your company maintains your equipment inventory outside the system, but uses the system to assign equipment to your end users, you can import that equipment inventory information into the IDI platform.
The IDI platform imports equipment inventory information "behind the scenes" using the background processes service. When a properly formated text file is added, the background process service converts the text file to an XML equipment import file and moves the XML file to the Equipment Inventory Import In folder on the server. This triggers the solution to import the equipment information into your equipment inventory.
The Equipment Import Settings table is used to convert the equipment import text file into an xml equipment import file. See Configuring Equipment Import Settings.
Your comma-delimited text file must be formatted correctly before the equipment inventory can be imported. See Formatting an Equipment Inventory Import Text File.
The IDI platform creates a log file based on the Equipment Import file process. This log contains ia summary of the records processed and warning messages when the status of an equipment item in the Equipment import file does not agree with the status of the item in equipment inventory. Each warning message contains the equipment name, the status from the import file and the status. A warning message is included in the log in these cases:
An equipment item has a status of Working in the import file and a status of Left-in, Available, or Not Available in the Inventory.
An equipment item has a status of Un-Assigned in the import file and a status of Assigned, Assigned (In Use), or Reserved in the Inventory.
The name of the log file is filename.log where filename is the name of the equipment inventory text file.
Example of a log file:
1/12/2006 1:34 PM Start of Generate Equipment Inventory Xml Process For File : 'smalltest_lninv.txt'1/12/2006 1:34 PM Error in file smalltest_lninv.txt on record number 2: Equipment status mismatch. File Status=WORKING; Equipment Status=Available; Name=HOST 00 0 00 01; TypeID=38; WireCenterID=15; InventoryItemID=1305111/12/2006 1:34 PM Error in file smalltest_lninv.txt on record number 3: Equipment status mismatch. File Status=WORKING; Equipment Status=Available; Name=HOST 00 0 00 02; TypeID=38; WireCenterID=15; InventoryItemID=1305121/12/2006 1:34 PMSummary of file 'smalltest_lninv.txt':Total # of records from file that were processed: 0Total # of records from file that were errors: 2Total # of records from file that were skipped: 2Total # of records read from file: 4