Moving PDF Source Files

[Former Member]

Hi All-

We have PDFs linked to our products repository in MDM that reside in a file system (not in the MDM database). We are upgrading our environment and need to move the source files to a new location.

Is there a way to easily update the source location for the PDFs in Data Manager? The only option I can see is to manually do a 'Replace' on each file. The source metadata of the file in Data Manager is not editable.

Any thoughts or help would be appreciated.

Tim

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Tim

Mass upload links for PDF is not supported in current SAP MDM version

You can change link one by one(manually) in PDF table use "Replace" option

or

if you just remove directory contain PDF files from one place to another one

export from your main table Records unique key and linked PDF LUT field value(you can do it in DM or in Syndicator)

PDF LUT Field contein PDF file name(nothnig more)

then

go to PDF table and delete all PDF links

then

add new pdf links from new PDF location

then

import records inique key and PDF names

but you can't map source PDF names to destination in automatic mode , only manually

after that - do import

all pdf's have returned to their places in main table

Regards

Kanstantsin Chernichenka

[Former Member]

if ALL of them had qualified path where some part is common like

//123.23.34.5/mdm/pdfs/folder1/adc.pdf

//123.23.34.5/mdm/pdfs/folder2/xyz.pdf

then a workaround could be -

export all record details to excel.

in excel do a replace of the common part "//123.23.34.5/mdm/pdfs" to "//new ip/new folder" (create same folder structure in new system as well - from folder1 level)

then do a upload to change these values only

hth

thanks

-Adrivit

but this works if u have a common part in the path - as said before

if it 's unique for each link - bad luck

Edited by: Adrivit on May 12, 2011 1:10 PM

[Former Member]

Adrivit-

That solution is not possible as there is not a way (that I can see) to update the source properties through import manager. In fact, you can't choose the PDFs table from the import manager. This would be a great feature though! (SAP, are you reading this?)

Kanstantsin-

I was partially successful using your export/import method, but found the following problems.

1. Unlinking PDFs from main table records is a manual process and you can't delete PDFs which are linked. I tried doing an import with NULL values in the PDF lookup field but the main table links remained. I needed to unlink them from the usage tab in data manager one at a time.

2. The export name property included the data group path. I could not see a way to map data groups on the import, so all of these paths had to be stripped from the export file. This also meant that the data group assignment was lost in the translation so we either need to reassign them when their loaded from the new location or put them back in the data groups afterwards

3. The export of records with multi-valued entries in the PDF fields show in Excel as tab separated, making the import mapping impossible. Each record with multiple PDF names needs to be manually reformatted in Excel prior to import.

Any other thoughts?

[Former Member]

Hello Tim Schotz

When you try to clear PDF values in main table did you set "Overwrite Existing

Values with NULLs" in Import Manager configuration? (sorry i forgot to said you about it)

According to group and multivalued - need some investigation

Regards

Kanstantsin Chernichenka

[Former Member]

Yes, I had the setting for overwrite NULLs. What I found today was that I also needed to set the 'Set Multi-Valued Update' to Replace. Without both options, only the single valued fields were overwritten.

thanks

[Former Member]

Hello Tim Schotz

Export your data from Data manager(i'm using export to Excel)

When you try to import data to repository you should set same "default delimiter string" as in your source in multivalued field.

how it works (page 219 IM Reference guide):

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nwmdm71/helpdata/en/4b/72b8e7a42301bae10000000a42189b/content.htm

Regards

Kanstantsin Chernichenka

[Former Member]

Thank you, Kanstantsin. Full points awarded.

To summarize for anyone else, the following steps will allow you to unlink, move PDF source files, and relink them to the main table:

1. Export to Excel all main table records with PDF lookup values from Data Manager. Export the key field and PDF name property. Set multi-value delimiter to semi-colon in the options -> configuration.

2. Remove all PDF info from spreadsheet and re-save as a new file.

3. Import Null values from step 2 to remove existing linkages. For the PDF fields, set Null interpretation to overwrite and set multi-valued update to replace. You can save this import map for use in step 6.

4. Delete PDFs from repository in Data Manager.

5. Move the PDF files to the new location, then upload them into correct data groups using Data Manager.

6. Import the PDF linkages using the key field and PDF name field of the file exported in step 1.