Best Practices

Whether you are using DB XML or CSV export, you should follow some basic rules to help maintain proper version control and avoid data inconsistencies.

In order to maintain proper version control and track all changes that are being made to agents, we recommend that you do not update existing active agents. Instead, we recommend the current agent be disabled and that a new agent is created with the changes that need to be made. This will allow you to easily revert back to the previous version should you run into anything unexpected when the new agent is being used.

This can be achieved simply by adding a date, "02252013" or a version identifier ‘V#’, i.e. "V1”, “V2”, “V3" etc. to the end of the AGENT_XID when the agent is being created. If an existing agent is exported, modify the AGENT_GID and AGENT_XID before it is imported into another instance.

For instance if you want to create a new agent you may call it "SHIPMENT-CREATED V1".

If you decide you want to make changes to this agent you would create a new agent called "SHIPMENT-CREATED V2", turn off "SHIPMENT-CREATED V1", and turn on the new agent.

Now if you decide the new agent is not working as expected the new agent can simply be turned off and the original agent can be turned back on to restore the original workflow.