Importing/Exporting Unit Of Measure (UOM) Conversion Definitions

The format of the Data

Importing Unit of Measure (UOM) conversions allows you the opportunity to do a mass update (or creation) of UOM definitions. Exporting UOM Conversions allows you to share your conversions with other Fishbowl users or other applications that can benefit from this data.

When importing the UOM Conversions either the factor or the multiply field must be set to 1.

The UOM import file is a CSV file formatted in a way that Fishbowl knows what to do with the data. If you don't have a file that was exported from Fishbowl, this can be easiest to do using a spreadsheet program.

All fields will be one of two types:

Text - A textual value. May contain any character, but if it contains a line break, comma or double quote, it must be wrapped with double quotes on both ends. If a field is wrapped, all text must be inside the double quotes. Double quotes in the text value must be doubled to import properly
Numeric - A decimal number greater than or equal to zero with up to four digits after the decimal point. The number must not have thousands' separators in it - 1234.56 is a valid number, while 1,234.56 is not.

CSV Fields in a UOM Conversion file

Column Name	Type	Description
ToUOM	Text (30 chars)	The abbreviation of the UOM to convert To *Required*
FromUOM	Text (30 chars)	The abbreviation of the UOM to convert From *Required*
Description	Text	A description for this conversion. This is a convenience field for exporting only. Descriptions will be auto created on import.
Factor	Numeric	The value to divide by to arrive at the new UOM. *Required*
Multiply	Numeric	The value to multiply by to arrive at the new UOM. *Required*

Creating a CSV file

In order to import your data, you must first export it to a comma separated values (CSV) text file. All major spreadsheet programs can export data in this format. If you do not know how to export your data to a CSV file, please refer to the documentation of your spreadsheet program.

When exporting to CSV format, make sure to verify the following:

The data is formatted properly (see the first section)
The file must contain column names in the first row, using the column names in the table above.
Commas are used to separate fields
Text values are surrounded by double quotes