About Mapping Imported Data to Project Attributes

After you import data, you can:

Use a selector to display imported data in a document based on an attribute that already exists in the project.
Group the imported data in a document based on an attribute that already exists in the project.
Automatically apply the security filters on an existing attribute to reports and documents that contain imported data.
If you have Administrator privileges, you can manage attributes created from the imported data by searching for objects that depend on the attribute and managing access control lists (ACLs) for the attribute.

To perform any of these tasks, you must map your data to attributes that already exist in the project. For detailed steps to map imported data to an attribute in the project, see: Importing data from a file

Restricting or grouping data in a document based on an attribute

In a single document, you can display both imported data and data from attributes and metrics that already exist in the project. By default, attributes created from imported data are treated separately from attributes that already exist in the project. If you map imported data to an existing project attribute, you can restrict or group both types of data in the document using the same attribute.

Automatically applying security filters to imported data

A security filter is a filter object that you assign to users or groups to restrict the results they can view when they execute reports or browse elements. For example, two regional managers have two different security filters assigned to them for their regions. One has a security filter assigned to her that only shows data from the Northeast, and the other has a security filter that only shows data from the Southwest. If these two regional managers run the same report that includes regional data, they will view different report results.

If you map your data to an attribute that has a security filter applied to it, this security filter is automatically applied to reports and documents that contain the mapped data.

Mapping imported data to an existing attribute in the project

To map a data column to an existing attribute, you must provide a data column to map to the ID attribute form of the existing attribute. This column must be the same data type as the ID attribute form. You can also map additional data columns to the attribute, by mapping each data column to a different attribute form.

When mapping data columns to attribute forms, avoid inconsistencies in the data. For example, the Customer attribute in a project has the attribute forms ID and Customer Name. The first attribute element has an ID of 1 and the Customer Name is John Smith. If you map data columns that contain an ID of 1 and the Customer Name Bill York, the mapped data will be inconsistent with the existing project data and will cause reporting issues. If the data that you want to import and map is inconsistent with the existing project data, consider importing your data without mapping it to a project attribute.