Defining a Flexible Upload

Use

You define a flexible upload in the Consolidation Workbench to import data from a file into the consolidation system. This specifies which data format the file has.

You use this procedure to define your Customizing settings for loading transaction data into your system.

For flexible uploading of master data and hierarchies , you only need to define the upload method and execute it in the Consolidation Workbench.

Procedure

A. Define the Task

Define a task for data collection to enable you to execute the flexible upload of transaction data in the Consolidation Monitor.

B. Define the Upload Method

  1. In the process view of the Consolidation Workbench, choose Start of the navigation path Consolidation Functions Next navigation step Data Collection Next navigation step Flexible Upload End of the navigation path .

  2. Create an upload method and give it a name.

  3. Choose a data type (for example, reported financial data).

  4. If more than one characteristic is available for the selected data type, select the characteristic to be uploaded.

  5. Define the settings for flexible uploads on the Settings tab page. For the details on these settings, see Customizing for Flexible Upload .

  6. On the Field Catalog tab page, determine whether you want to use an external field catalog.

    List the data columns in the upload file and the order they are in. To do this, drag the desired fields from Remaining Fields to the field catalog.

    You can also use free fields to skip over data that is contained in the file, but is not relevant for consolidation. For more information on free fields, see Customizing for Flexible Upload .

  7. If you want to use an external field catalog, define the mapping settings on the Mapping tab page.

  8. If you use an external field catalog, on the Selection tab page you can restrict the source data and the scope of data to be written (see Selection ).

C. Assign a Method

To upload the transaction data, proceed as follows:

  1. Assign the upload method to a data collection method.

  2. In the data collection task, assign the data collection method to the respective consolidation unit.

For more information, see Data Collection Method and Customizing for the Data Collection Task .

D. Prepare the Upload File

Make sure that the upload file possesses the attributes you specified in method customizing.

The upload must have the file type Text .

As an alternative, you can first create the file in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Then you can save the spreadsheet as a text file by saving the workbook with the file extension *.TXT or *.CSV.

Recommendation Recommendation

Before you upload the data, examine both the Microsoft Excel file and the text file.

End of the recommendation.