If you have a large number of assets to modify or you just want to take advantage of the editing features, such as find and replace, in Microsoft Excel, you can edit assets and their properties in a spreadsheet and then import those changes to ATG Merchandising. You import your changes into an ATG Merchandising project, where you can further validate and modify the imported assets before you deploy them to your live Web site.
The following table shows the steps to import assets from a spreadsheet:
Step | Task | Procedure |
|---|---|---|
1 | Create a spreadsheet in the correct format for importing to ATG Merchandising. The supported file types are CSV and XLS. | |
2 | Load the file and validate that the assets can be imported. | |
3 | Import the spreadsheet. | |
4 | Review the outcome of the import for any errors or warnings. | |
5 | Review the assets in your project. Revert any changes that you do not want to keep and resolve any version conflicts that might exist. | Reverting Changes to Assets and Resolving Conflicts with Other Projects in Chapter 4. |
Import Guidelines and Limitations
The import feature provides a convenient method for editing assets in batches. You can use the editing features of a spreadsheet application to modify multiple assets and then import all of your changes to an ATG Merchandising project at once.
For example, you could:
Find and replace a string of text for a list of assets
Export a list of products or SKUs with the property you want to edit, edit the property using the find and replace feature of Microsoft Excel, and then import the updated assets. See Exporting Asset Data and Importing Asset Data.
Add new products to categories
Export the categories, edit the spreadsheet to add new products to those categories, and then import them back to ATG Merchandising. See Exporting Asset Data and Format for Adding Items to a Collection.
You do not have to add assets to a project to import them, but you do have to be working in the context of a project. When you import the spreadsheet, the new and modified assets are added to your project and their property values are updated with the values in your spreadsheet. Unmodified assets are not added to the project.
To import changes to an asset, you must have write privileges. Because the export feature requires only list and view privileges, it is possible that you can export an asset but not be able to import that asset.
Versioning Considerations
The spreadsheets you use to import and export data from ATG Merchandising do not include versioning information about assets. When you import assets, be sure that you start with the latest version of the asset to avoid accidentally overwriting properties with obsolete values.
If you check out an asset and edit a property value in your project, and then import an updated value for that same property, there is no record of your earlier edits. You can revert changes to the asset, but the properties revert to the values in the main version, not those in your project version prior to import.
