Creating Your Own Spreadsheet

You can create your own spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel or use an existing spreadsheet that you have modified to meet the Data Migrator requirements. Create the spreadsheet following these guidelines. The spreadsheet must contain:

• Information about a single entity type. For example, if you want to import application, location, and workstream entities, you must create three spreadsheets, one for each entity type.

• A row of column headings. Although this can be any row, it should be a row that contains a brief description or name for the type of information the column contains. You can map the column headings to entity fields later.

• Your spreadsheet must include a column that contains a unique identifier for each entity you are importing. When you configure the Data Migrator to import the data from the spreadsheet, you designate a column as the column that contains the unique ID or name for each entity. For example, if all of your entities have unique names, you can designate the column that contains the entity names as the identifier column.

• (Optional) When the Data Migrator creates an entity, it assigns the entity a unique PPM request number. If you include a column that contains only a column heading, the Data Migrator enters the request number in this column when the entity is created—this column must be blank except for the column heading. Make note of the name you give this column. You can later map it to the field identified in Table 3-2. Field, by entity type, to be mapped to the request number column.

  Note: Although the request number column is optional, consider including it in your spreadsheet. The request numbers that the Data Migrator adds to this column are required if you update the entities later using the Data Migrator.

• (Optional) A row that contains tokens that correspond to each of the column headings. (Tokens are unique identifiers assigned by PPM to each of the fields in an APM entity.) If you include a row of PPM tokens in your spreadsheet, the Data Migrator automatically maps the spreadsheet columns that have tokens to the fields in the APM entity during the mapping process. If you create your spreadsheet using a template that you download from the Data Migrator, the token row is populated for you. (For instructions, see Creating an Import Spreadsheet from a Template.)