Extensions are often used with Master Data objects, and it is common to use the SAP Sourcing Import capabilities to set up a system deployment by importing master data from Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Extension attributes can be imported with the system-defined attributes through the same import. For details about the import functionality, see Import Data.

Put simply, an Excel sheet in a workbook is used to provide values to be imported for a class of objects. Columns relate to an attribute on the object, and rows contain all the values that relate to one instance of an object. On the sheet for Suppliers, each row corresponds to a new supplier object, and the columns in that row provide the values for each field in that supplier object. Templates for the sheets are provided with the system.

For simple extension attributes, add a column to the Excel worksheet using the extension attribute Internal Name as the column header.

Since a collection list extension can have n rows of data for a single object, a different structure is necessary to support import. An additional sheet is required for each class of objects with collection list extensions. An example is included in the sample AutoStar deployment; see the supplier_list_extensions sheet in the AutoStarEnterprise deployment workbook in the online Reference Guide (RG).

The first three columns in the sheet are standard and used for any collection list extension. The next two columns are included because this specific collection list extension includes two attributes. If, for example, the Supplier object extension included two collection list extensions, one with two columns and one with three columns, the spreadsheet would need eight columns: the three standard ones, two columns for the attributes of one collection, and three columns for the second collection extension. Note that each row has a single COLLECTION name and so only provides values for one set of the data columns. The following table provides details about the use of each column: