This section will review all the options available to importing Equipment object into an Area.
Note that the focus will be on specific options and features available for this particular use case, while the common details already described in detail in the introductory topic will be covered briefly.
When importing Equipment Racks to be placed into an Area the user will need to define the following fields in an CSV import file:
Field Name
Description
Area
The name of the Area within which the Equipment will be placed eg. Building 1 Floor 1
Type Name
The name of the Equipment Type as defined in the Equipment Type database e.g.Nordx 2 Port Cat6 Faceplate
Name
The equipment name to help identify the Equipment being imported. e.g. WA0001/A
Instance Lifecycle Stage
The lifecycle stage to be assigned to the imported Equipment, e.g. 'Deployed'
Positioning Direction
Specifies how the RU's are number and will be defined as either:
TopDown: RU Numbering starts at the Top of the Rack and increments downwards
BottomUp: RU Numbering starts the bottom of the rack and increments upwards
Place By Value
The Place By Value is used to identify how and where the equipment being imported will be placed within an Area and can contain or reference any of the following values:
Text String
Space Name
Location Name
Equipment Name
The following is a worked example showing how to import Rack Objects to a Text String located in the Imported CAD File:
Example of Imported CAD File for Area named "Building1 Floor 1"
This area of the CAD file shows a text string TR1/A identifying a rack CAD Block position in the TR1 Telecomm Room in Area Building1 Floor 1.
Upload the .csv file and leave the default selected Equipment object type for import in the first step of the DDR Import Wizard. Click on Next button to proceed for the next step.
Specify the CSV Identity Mode and the CSV Identity Mode by clicking on one of the radio buttons:
Setting the CSV Identity value specifies how the data from the CSV records is matched against existing IRM objects. Note that, in addition to None and Name, for Equipment object types there are additional CSV Identity Modes available for selection:
Identity Mode
Description
Serial Number
The CSV data must have a column mapped to the IRM serialNum field. If not, the server returns an error. All Import Mode values are possible.
Asset Number 1 or 2
The CSV data must have a column mapped to the IRM assetNum field. If not, the server returns an error. All Import Mode values are possible.
Serial Number and Asset Number 1 or 2
The CSV data must have columns mapped to both serialNum and assetNum1 (or assetNum2) fields. This is an "AND" condition, where both fields have to match. If not, the server returns an error. All Import Mode values are possible.
Name
The CSV data must have a column mapped to the IRM name field. If not, the server returns an error. All Import Mode values are possible.
None
This means there is no attempt to match the CSV records against existing IRM objects. The only valid Import Mode is Create Only
Setting the CSV Import value specifies whether new objects are created from the CSV data or existing IRM objects are overwritten by matching CSV objects. Please refer to the introductory topic for more details about what each Import Mode means.
For this example, we will leave the None and Create Only default values for import parameters.
IMPORTANT: Successful matching is critical in order to do updates of existing objects and to avoid creating duplicated objects.The difference between Overwrite and Patch is that Overwrite updates the entire target object, whereas Patch only updates the fields explicitly supplied in the CSV file. In most cases, the Patch modes are more appropriate.
In this tab we specify what type of marker to search for in the CAD file (i.e. Place By Text) and the column in the uploaded CSV that contains that value (i.e. Place By Value):
This tab is used to map the additional data columns for Area, Type Name, Name and Instance Lifecycle Stage:
Note: When the column name in the CSV matches the column name in the Wizard, the fields will be auto-mapped.
WARNING: Duplication checking can be computationally expensive when large DDR files are imported into a Site with large numbers of Equipment objects (hundreds of thousands or more).
The CAD Block is replaced with a fully defined Rack Object providing Rack Elevation views, Asset Management, Environmental and Space Analytic capabilities.
IMPORTANT: In case when the DDR import includes multiple types of placement in a single operation, the critical Equipment characteristics, such as IsRackMountable, IsRailMountable, IsSubcomponent) must be set correctly in order for the code to understand what kind of placement it should be trying to do. If otherwise, the application will return the "PlaceBy object not found" error message.
