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Importing Marketing attributes into C4C Hybris

The data workbench functionality has been around for a while now; although little has been written
about this specific topic. The purpose of this blog is to provide you some guidance through the process
which could help you to execute your next data migration challenge with ease.

How to migrate attribute values

To get started right away, just open the HTML5 user interface and navigate to Data Workbench work
center in the top menu. You should find 4 options there: Monitor, Import, Update and Export. In case
you do not have the work center available or if you are missing options this should be configured in the
business role access restrictions settings.

Migration scenarios

In this tutorial, we cover 2 migration scenarios:

1. Importing new attribute values to existing customers with no pre-existing values;


2. Updating preexisting attribute values with new values.

For each scenario, it is required to follow a different approach.

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Scenario 1: Import new Attribute values

1. Go to Import and select the Attribute Assignment object. Download the CSV file for both the
Attribute Assignment and the Attribute Assignment Item object. Now you will have 2 import
templates available in CSV format.

2. Open both CSV templates in MS Excel. These files are named by default:
a. Template_BusinessAttributeAssignment;
b. Template_BusinessAttributeAssignmentItem.
c. Template number # 1 will be used for the Attribute assignment to the Business Partner
i.e. Account or Contact Person. Template number #2 will be used to specify the
Attributes and Attribute values that you want to import.
3. Open the first template and fill-in the 3 columns as follows. In the first column ExternalKey a
unique key should be entered to identify the line and assign this to the BusinessPartnerID in the
third column. The second column ObjectTypeCode should be filled with value 147 by default,
which is a technical code for the system to determine this is about attribute value migration.
Save file as CSV file in Excel. Make sure that a comma (,) is being used as separator and no other
character. The first import file should look something like this:

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4. Now open the second template and fill-in the 6 columns as follows.
a. In the first column ExternalKey again a unique key should be entered to identify the
line of the attribute assignment value. Take notice that this should be unique thus
different from the external keys that had be used in the first file.
b. The second column should refer to the external key that was used in the first file. With
this reference you will assign the attribute to the correct Account or Contact person.
c. The third column will contain the Attribute values that you want to assign to the
business partner. For this you use the technical keys as configured in the Attribute setup
in case you are working with drop-down list values.
d. Now the forth column is the technical name of the Attribute Set, as per the system
configuration.
e. The fifth column ObjectTypeCode should again be filled with value 147 by default.
f. Finally, the sixth column contains the technical name of the Attribute itself.
The second import file should look something like this:

5. After completing both import files now open the IMPORT menu again in the Data Workbench
and first select the Attribute Assignment function. Now click on the Next button. Browse to the
first import that you prepared and click on upload. If uploaded successfully, click 3 times on the

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next button in the right bottom. Accept the proposed mapped, just proceed clicking to the final
screen where you can click on the Import button. Proceed and click on the import button.
6. Check the results in the MONITOR section of the data workbench. If everything went
successfully it should state status Finished with the quantity of Successful records. If failed then
it should state the number of errors. You can download the imported file from here and review
the error messages on the records.
7. Now repeat steps 5 and 6 for the second import file which contains the attribute value items.
Just click through the same screens and review the results in the monitor. If you have
successfully imported both files you can verify the results on the Accounts and/or Contact
Persons.
Scenario # 2: Update attribute values for existing attributes

This scenario is slightly different than the previous one. The reason for this is that we now want to
update the records in the database that are already existing. This is a bit more complicated because we
need to identify the database records with technical identifiers called ObjectIDs.
1. Go to the EXPORT function in the Data Workbench and again select the Attribute Assignment
and the Attribute Assignment Item objects (one at a time). Now click on the next button which
will show a screen with the number of total records and then click on Export Data. In case you
have many records then you should limit your selection.
2. Go to MONITOR section and download both export files by clicking file names.
3. Open both files in MS Excel. In the first file, the attribute assignment, you will see almost the
same structure as we have seen in the first import scenario. The only difference is that we see
Unique Identifiers as ObjectIDs. By these technical identifiers we can locate the records in the
database. For updating existing records, we should use these identifiers.

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Now open the second file with the Attribute Assignment items. Here you will see the attribute
values in the first column. In the second column the identifiers of the assignment items (BLUE)
and in the third column the reference to the ObjectID of the first file (YELLOW).
This means you can link back the assignment item records to the business partner ID by
matching the ObjectID in the third column of the second file with the objectID of the first
column in the first file. Basically, match the yellow line of the first file with the yellow lines in the
second file.
This can be done with VLOOKUP in excel or in case you have a huge amount of records (a million
records) it would be better to use a tool such as MS Access. This tutorial does not cover the use
of Excel nor Access.

4. In case you want to modify (update) existing attribute items, just take the second file you
exported in the previous steps and modify the values in the first column. Then save it again in
CSV format.
5. Finally go to the UPDATE section of the Data Workbench. Now select Attribute Assignment Item
and click on the Next button. Browse to your modified CSV file and click again on UPLOAD, then
click on Next followed by clicking on Update. This should update the existing records with the
modified values. Again review the results in the MONITOR section.
6. In case you want to add new records to Existing Assignments (instead of modifying existing
values). Just follow the same steps as in step 3-4-5 but now you leave the second ObjectID
column empty. Then C4C will automatically assign a new unique ObjectID to those records
during the UPDATE. The ParentObjectID should still refer to the one of the Business Partner.
Also make sure to use the correct references to the Attribute Set and Attributes in the last two
columns when adding new entries.
7. Pro tip: it is also possible to delete records with the Update function in the data workbench. For
this you add "ToBeDeleted" as the last column to the file. Then for the records to be deleted, set
the value as "true" in "ToBeDeleted" column. Upload the file in the Update function and these
records will be deleted from the system.

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8. Thats it! Hopefully this information has been helpful to you. The principles of this migration
method remain pretty much the same for other objects that can be imported and modified with
the data workbench. So, this information can be applied to any object. Good luck! Cheers!

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