importing children?

[LuffmanA]

I have in another database a list of companies (with requisite address, phone, date of contact, etc) and also a list of people within that company (with contact date, e-mail address).

I have experimented with importing the company info and it works like a charm (except that I have to put the company name under first name or it is in the middle of the contact info).

Is there a way to import the contact info as a child in bulk? I know I could do it one company at a time but there are around 2K of them (& 4K contacts) and I expect to have to repeat this excercise at least once a month.

I would really like to be able to distribute this info to field reps who do not have access to the main database.

Both the company and contact have UIDs in the parent database if that helps.

Is it possible?

[kevina]

If I understand you correctly, you have a database (external to Ultra Recall) that contains company/contact information in a parent-child relationship. You need to import some or all of this data into Ultra Recall to be distributed to users (who will use Ultra Recall to view the data).

From that, I am understanding your question to be: how can you import the companies/contacts in a single step... Is that correct?

How are you currently importing the data, from a csv file? One way you can do that (with a csv import) would be to add a csv column that maps to the Indent Level "virtual" attribute on import. Assign 0 as the value for contacts and 1 for the contacts.

You should be able to import only the Company Name (and not the first or last names) for the company "contact" records. Contact Info Items will use the company attribute value as the Item Title if both the first and last name attributes are empty...

Hope I understood your question correctly and was clear in my answer :)

[LuffmanA]

Yes, it seems like you have it right. I thought I was being specific but, after reading your reply, some of my info was vague.

Yes, I have linked tables in another database and run a query to get a 2D spreadsheet and save as CSV.

Yes, we would like to distribute to the field in an URD but the original info will always be maintained in the original database, not UR. I would have to expert periodically to UR and distribute.

I will give it a try tomorrow when I have a fresh brain to work with.

Thanks,
Amei

[LuffmanA]

I found the indent level control that you mentioned and have spent all day playing around with it. Pretty cool!

I have created and merged 4 queries with turn into 3 levels of indent in UR.

Now, another small difficulty. I need to associate some dates and other information with each company. There are no date fields on the contact template so I decided to use a field that I don't use for anything else - the middle name field.

OK, so far so good but it would really rock if there were a way to change the field label. From a previous answer, I now know you can't do that.

I discovered that you can also import into the Item Notes page so I played with that a bit, too. Nice.

Many of the companies have several dates that need to be noted (and are in my other database) but I can't figure out how to get the multiple items in the database transferred into a single field (as multiple lines) in the CSV.

Some companies have no dates at all and others have several dozen. I can string them all together if there are a set number but I can't figure out how to do it when there are a variable number of values in the same field of the parent database.

Also, if there is some kind of special character or key sequence that I can include in the concatenation that would provide a line break, that would really be helpful.

I know this isn't technically about UR, more about how to manipulate data to fit into UR. If you have any brilliant ideas about how to make this happen, please share.

Thanks,
Amei

PS - I am really enjoying UR and how it can handle all my stuff. (One of my coworkers thinks I am getting a kickback from you because I try to sell everyone on the program.)

There is only one thing that keeps it from moving from 'Wow, really useful' to "AWESOME - can't live without it!" and that is customizable forms. Please, please, pretty please, add this to your list for future releases.