1. Contents
  2. Reference
  3. Channels and tasks
  4. Custom
  5. Orders Import

Orders Import

The task reads orders from a file, with line items and billing and shipping address. It is the route for a sales system that has no connection of its own, and for the one-off case where past orders from a replaced system are to come into TRADElube.

What gets transferred

One record per order, with its head data, its line items and both addresses. The customer is created along with it on request. Without that request the order stays without a customer master record.

The line items sit in the same file, one row per item. So ten rows carrying the same order number become one order with ten items, and not ten orders.

How the transfer plan is built

Seven sections, and the layout decides more here than on any other task of this channel.

Layout section of the orders import task with the two record sets Order and Item and the mapping as a script

Section What sits in it
Layout Two record sets: the order and, nested below it, the line item
Selection Whether an unknown order is created, and which further channels it is marked for
Common The head data: order number, time, order, payment and shipping status
Customer Existing Customer and Create Customer
Billing Address The address the invoice goes to
Shipping Address The address delivered to
Order Items Article, quantity, unit price and the remaining fields of an item

The line item record set gets no mapping. It is nested below the order's record set and stays empty in the Mapping row. The reason is the rule that a record set with a mapping is an object of its own: were the item to carry one, every row would become an order of its own. Without a mapping it is a set of rows belonging to its predecessor's order, and that is exactly what it is meant to be. The order itself carries both the mapping and Grouping on the order number.

A status value is not a text. Order, payment and shipping status refer to entries from the settings, which is why the row offers no field assignment but a fixed value or a script. Where your file carries a different status per row, create one record set per status value in the Common section and narrow it down to the matching rows through its Selection. With four order statuses that means four record sets, each with a fixed value.

The customer is only created if you say so. Both rows in the Customer section are unticked out of the box. Existing Customer looks the master record the order is attached to up through a script, usually by the customer number from the file. Create Customer decides what happens where none was found. The newly created customer takes the order's addresses along. A separate address section on the customer is not needed for it.

Special features and limits

The task's Renewal Time stands at Never out of the box, unlike the other imports. An order once read in is a closed matter, and an execution over the same file does not write it again. To follow up the order status from the file, switch it over.

Customers have no task of their own. They are created along with the order, or they are in TRADElube already.

A second execution over the same file is the way to put things in order afterwards: it links orders to customers that have been created in the meantime.

Further reading