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Upload updates via excel

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webmac
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Nov 9, 2005, 8:15 AM

Post #1 of 30 (12130 views)
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Upload updates via excel	Can't Post

I haven't used Listings Mgr yet, so not sure what it will do out of the box. One request my client has is to be able to take an excel spreadsheet and upload it to enter or edit all the data at once. Is this possible and if so, what fields need to be set up in the excel file to match. Any info would be appreciated.

Webmac

ross
Staff / Moderator

Nov 9, 2005, 2:40 PM

Post #2 of 30 (12118 views)
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Re: [webmac] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Webmac.

Thanks for posting!

Listings Manager stores its data in a CSV format file so you will be able to use excel to format existing data and then save it in the right format. You can even take existing Listings Manager data and edit it all at once.

Of course, we always recommend using the Listings Manager interface to handle data modification though as working like this is a lot more technical. I can send you a sample spreadsheet that will show you the order of all the data fields. If you need a copy, just send an email to me at support@interactivetools.com

I look forward to hearing from you Smile

.
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Ross Fairbairn - Product Specialist
support@interactivetools.com

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webmac
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Nov 10, 2005, 6:58 AM

Post #3 of 30 (12093 views)
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Re: [ross] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Thanks Ross,
Cliff sent me a copy of the spreadsheet layout. I presume I just upload this directly to the server. This does seem too technical for my client to handle. Are there any other solutions, maybe a 3rd party vendor that has an interface to do bulk uploads?

Thanks,
Webmac

Cliff
Staff

Nov 10, 2005, 5:52 PM

Post #4 of 30 (12084 views)
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Re: [webmac] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Webmac,

Thanks for posting.

The spreadsheet that I sent you is just a guideline if you are looking to import some bulk data. Usually you just do this once to get your listings into the system, and then you can maintain them all from within the program.

Is that what you have in mind, or are you going to be importing more than once?
Regards,
Cliff Stefanuk - Customer Service Manager
[email]support@interactivetools.com[/email]

webmac
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Nov 11, 2005, 6:20 AM

Post #5 of 30 (12052 views)
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Re: [Cliff] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Well, my client was looking to upload an excel file weekly. At this point I'm not sure how many listings would change, but they wanted the convenience of making all the changes in excel and just uploading that 1 file, instead of uploading sepearate listings with photos etc. Have anything else in mind?

Webmac

yourPAGES
User

Nov 14, 2005, 2:07 AM

Post #6 of 30 (11984 views)
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Re: [Cliff] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Cliff,

We've been considering doing this too, and have been studying the data file format to make sure we understand where and what every field is.

Do you have a record layout specification available so we can be sure wht we're dealing with?

Thanks,
--
Bryan
your.PAGES
--

ross
Staff / Moderator

Nov 14, 2005, 12:48 PM

Post #7 of 30 (11966 views)
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Re: [yourPAGES] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Brian.

Thanks for posting!

If you could send me an email at support@interactivetools.com, I can get the spreadsheet Cliff mentioned, sent out to you.

How does that sound? Let me know if you have any questions in the meantime Smile

yourPAGES
User

Nov 14, 2005, 12:57 PM

Post #8 of 30 (11964 views)
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Re: [ross] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Thanks Ross... I've done that.
--
Bryan
your.PAGES
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netmotiv8
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Sep 1, 2006, 9:57 AM

Post #9 of 30 (11154 views)
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Re: [ross] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

In Reply To

Can you send me a sample spreadsheet too?

Cheers

Neil :-)

MikeB
Staff / Moderator

Sep 2, 2006, 11:00 AM

Post #10 of 30 (11144 views)
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Re: [netmotiv8] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Neil,

Thanks for posting! Smile

I can definitely send this spreadsheet out to you so you'll just want to send an email to support@interactivetools.com, if you haven't already.

In the meantime if you have any other questions or comments, just let me know! Smile

Cheers,
Mike Briggs - Product Specialist
support@interactivetools.com

[hr][i][url "http://www.interactivetools.com/consulting/"][b]Hire me![/b][/url]
Save time by getting our experts to help with your project. Template changes, advanced features, full integration, whatever you need. Whether you need one hour or fifty, get it done fast with [url "http://www.interactivetools.com/consulting/"][b]Priority Consulting[/b][/url].[/i]

netmotiv8
User

Nov 1, 2006, 7:15 PM

Post #11 of 30 (10740 views)
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Re: [MikeB] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Has anyone got this working yet. I am having difficulty with the upside down exclamation mark symbol and where it should be positioned on the spreadsheet.

Does anyone have a sample sheet they could send me with real data? (including the column name headings)

Kind regards

Neil.

netmotiv8
User

Jan 14, 2007, 7:47 PM

Post #12 of 30 (10451 views)
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Re: [netmotiv8] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Just thought I would let this forum know that we are successfully importing an Excel spreadsheet in AM.

We have created a script, running on a Linux server, which we run as a cron to check for new files. When a new file is found we have used SED http://www.gnu.org/software/sed/ which converts a tab-delimited file exported from Excel, strips out unwanted characters and inserts the special delimiter character (upside down exclamation mark) into a correctly formatted listings.dat.cgi file

If the forum is interested I can paste an example of the script here.

Let me know

Cheers

Neil.

Donna
Staff / Moderator

Jan 15, 2007, 1:47 PM

Post #13 of 30 (10439 views)
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Re: [netmotiv8] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Neil,

That sounds really neat! Glad to hear you were able to get a working solution setup. :)

Donna

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support@interactivetools.com

netmotiv8
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Jan 15, 2007, 3:21 PM

Post #14 of 30 (10435 views)
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Re: [Donna] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Only trouble is now my client wants to upload 6000+ cars into Auto Manager! Which is not possible. The flat file database isnt ideal for that many records.

I have an Article Manager 2 License. Can I create an Auto Manager environment in Article Manager?

Cheers

Neil

Donna
Staff / Moderator

Jan 15, 2007, 3:27 PM

Post #15 of 30 (10433 views)
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Re: [netmotiv8] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Neil,

Article Manager and Auto Manager are designed for pretty different ideas, so depending on what you need to do, I'm not sure if it'll work or not.

On the other hand... can you give me an idea of what your "must have" features are? Maybe we can come up with a working solution. :)

Alternately, with multiple licenses of Auto Manager, you can split things up into different categories (say, Japanese cars in one, American cars in another, or something along those lines). You'd need to purchase an extra license, and some extra tweaking would be required to make sure your users were searching the correct database, but this could be another option to think about.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other details, or any other questions. :)

Donna

--
support@interactivetools.com

netmotiv8
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Jan 15, 2007, 4:47 PM

Post #16 of 30 (10431 views)
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Re: [Donna] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Thanks for reply Donna

Well we pretty much want to do what Auto Manager already does.

I would be interested to know how running multiple licenses under the one site would work. Our client has about 30 car manufacturers and related model/ranges. Are you saying I could use multiple licenses to break to breakdown the 6000+ record size in a single listings.dat.cgi file to multiple listings.dat.cgi to say 500-1000 in each. That would be a hefty license cost!

In Article Manager I figured that:

- An Article Category could be a Car Manufacturer
- An Article could be a car, and therefore a list articles would be the equivalent of a list of cars etc etc.

I also need to show the car detail so I thought that an article could link to another 'article' that is that car details and have an enquiry form within in?

Does Article Manager generated thumbnails?

Ideally I would like Auto Manager to be MySQL based and my problems would be solved. Is there any news on this?

Cheers

Neil.

(This post was edited by netmotiv8 on Jan 15, 2007, 5:05 PM)

ross
Staff / Moderator

Jan 16, 2007, 1:59 PM

Post #17 of 30 (10410 views)
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Re: [netmotiv8] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Neil

Thanks for posting!

Separate licenses on one site would basically be like working with different installations. Each one would be setup individually and you would log into them individually. I have seen it done before and it works quite well.

Basically, you would want to break your listings into logical groups so all listings that are similar stay in the same database.

Now, with Article Manager, you'll find that it can do everything that Listings Manager can with one main difference; searching. Article Manager is keyword base searching where as Listings Manager can do exact match as well as range searching. If you weren't going to be using that too much, Article Manager can have as many different categories as you like, it creates thumbnails the same way as Listings Manager and each category automatically has an index page created for it. And the best thing is that you have the option of running it on top of a MySQL database so you'll have no trouble with your 5000-6000 listings.

Does that all help? Let me know if there is anything else I can go into more detail on for you Smile

netmotiv8
User

Jan 16, 2007, 3:20 PM

Post #18 of 30 (10406 views)
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Re: [ross] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hello Ross,

This is sounding good :-)

So basically with Article Manager you are saying that I can do the same as Auto Manager but with the benefit of being SQL based, correct?

Regarding the searching, this is how we select a manufacturer in our main links, in this example we are searching for Audi:

/search.cgi?search=1&perpage=25&lfield1_keyword=audi&sort_order=5,123,forward&template=_search_results_audi.html

How would this differ in Article Manager, I assume we can do similar.

I think keyword searching has its advantages in my client's case.

Currently we run a script which allows our customer to import a tab delimited file (from an excel spreadsheet) into Auto Manager. Is this easier enough to do with Article Manager? if so, how?

Also, we also generate an XML file from Auto Manager using the xml feed script you guys provide. We need this, so can Article Manager do this to? If so, how?

Hopefully it can do everything we want as we really don't want to shift away from Interactive Tools if we can help.

Is there any news/progress an an MySQL version of Auto Manager?

Many thanks

Neil :-)

netmotiv8
User

Jan 16, 2007, 4:00 PM

Post #19 of 30 (10402 views)
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Re: [netmotiv8] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Another question Smile

How do I create 'fields' in Article Manager like fields in Auto Manager e.g. $lfield1$ etc

Do I create placeholders instead or something?

When compared to Auto Manager, Article Manager blows your mind Crazy

Cheers

Neil.

ChetW
Staff

Jan 17, 2007, 12:01 PM

Post #20 of 30 (10386 views)
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Re: [netmotiv8] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the follow-up!

In Article Manger2 admin there is a section called the "Database Editor", inside this section you can create new database fields. The placeholder for a field in the database is based on the database table and field name, for example:

$article.summary$

"article" represents the database table name and "summary" is the field name.

You can find the "Database Editor" in the Article Manager admin section by going to 'Admin' --> 'Database Editor'. To read more about the different options available to you in the database table editor take a look at this link:

http://www.interactivetools.com/docs/articlemanager2/admin/index.html

(select 'Table Editor" from the left side menu.)

Does this answer your question Neil? If you have any further questions please feel free to ask. :)
Cheers,
Chet Woodside - Product Specialist
support@interactivetools.com

[hr][i][url "http://www.interactivetools.com/consulting/"][b]Hire me![/b][/url]
Save time by getting our experts to help with your project. Template changes, advanced features, full integration, whatever you need. Whether you need one hour or fifty, get it done fast with [url "http://www.interactivetools.com/consulting/"][b]Priority Consulting[/b][/url].[/i]

netmotiv8
User

Jan 17, 2007, 12:37 PM

Post #21 of 30 (10383 views)
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Re: [ChetW] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Chet,

Thanks for your reply.

Yes, I found this after I posted yesterday so I now understand how to setup fields.

I'm gradually getting there, it's a bit of a learning curve having used Auto Manager for so long!

Some more questions:

Currently we run a script which allows our customer to import a tab delimited file (from an excel spreadsheet) into Auto Manager. Is this easier enough to do with Article Manager? if so, how?

Also, we also generate an XML file from Auto Manager using the xml feed script you guys provide. We need this, so can Article Manager do this to? If so, how?

Many thanks

Neil Smile

(This post was edited by netmotiv8 on Jan 17, 2007, 12:38 PM)

ross
Staff / Moderator

Jan 17, 2007, 3:04 PM

Post #22 of 30 (10375 views)
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Re: [netmotiv8] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Neil

Thanks for getting back in touch!

Article Manager stores its data much the same way as Auto Manager so if you already had the script running for Auto Manager, it should be fairly straight forward to get it going for Article Manager. The main thing will be the data fields are different so you would need to adjust that part of your script.

If you wanted to send me an email, I can send back an outline of what all the fields are (make a note of which version of Article Manager you are using as they are both different).

Both versions of Article Manager have options for publishing RSS feeds so that part won't be a problem Smile

netmotiv8
User

Jan 18, 2007, 7:29 AM

Post #23 of 30 (10352 views)
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Re: [ross] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Ross,

I will send you an email in a short while.

Another question... sorry Blush

Can I recreate thumbnails outside of Article Manager like you can with Auto Manager using this command line:

/cgi-bin/automan/exec/admin.cgi?login=1&id=username&pw=password&setup_recreate_thumbnails=Create

Cheers

Neil Smile

netmotiv8
User

Jan 24, 2007, 4:06 AM

Post #24 of 30 (10298 views)
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Re: [netmotiv8] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Ross,

Any news on the email I sent you and a reply to the above comment about Thumbnail recreation?

Kind regards

Neil Smile

Jimbob
User

Feb 5, 2007, 11:59 PM

Post #25 of 30 (10138 views)
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Re: [netmotiv8] Upload updates via excel [In reply to]	Can't Post

Hi Neil

I'd be interested in seeing your excel to Auto Manager script. Any chance of posting it here or sending me a private message with the details?

Many thanks

Jim
--
[url "http://www.My-French-House.com"]My-French-House.com[/url]
Selling French property to the english speaking world.

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