PeopleTools 8.54 Feature: ExcelToCI Errors and Warnings Worksheet

Some years ago, I wrote this post on ExcelToCI limitations. One of the limitations I've found annoying in the past was the need to move the mouse over each Warning or Error result cell. It was not just annoying, it actually didn't allow the users to easily work on the different error types and analyze useful information such as the most common error messages, how many rows would go through if they solved a particular issue, etc.

PeopleTools 8.54 has introduced a new worksheet showing all the warning and error messages. The following screenshot provides a clear view on how the information is presented:

From that point on, the users may analyze the messages using Excel dynamic tables, filters, etc. Yet, there is some room for improvement. The most obvious one is to put each particular error in a different Excel row. That would make error analysis much richer.

Let's see how this evolves with the next releases of PeopleTools.

ExcelToCI limitations: when not to use it

Since it's introduction with PeopleTools 8.4x, ExcelToCI has generated excitement particularly among consultants running implementations. Finally there was a tool that allowed consultants with little or no technical knowledge to quickly load data into the system.

Now, as it normally happens in these situations, a good tool may become a bad choice if we are using it in a way it wasn't designed for. Personally, I've seen people trying to use ExcelToCI to run complex data loading resulting in unexpected delays due to the need to build ad-hoc tools for conversion.

What are the most significant ExcelToCI limitations? You may find others, but from my experience, these are quite important:

• ExcelToCI does not allow to determine the order in which fields are loaded into the application. The order is determined by the tab order defined at the page level in Application Designer.
• Loading large data volumes becomes unpractical for performance reasons. Excel could easily hang when manipulating spreadsheets with over 10,000 rows.
• Excel becomes nearly blocked when executing the load. It's difficult to perform any other action on the same workstation, and particularly to load several files in parallel.
• Can only run in Add or Update mode, but there is not hybrid option to first try to Add and then Update is the row was present.
  

At BNB, we built a tool called FileToCI (Ok, not much marketing brainstorming here!) that deals with most of these limitations:

• Lets you choose in which order you want fields to be loaded.
• Loads from CSV files or database tables, which are much easier to handle than Excel files.
  
• Lets you load different files in parallel. Processing is done at the server level, without capturing your local resources.
• Includes a Hybrid load option, which only adds the rows that were not present before the load and updates the remaining ones.
  

Again, I'm not saying ExcelToCI is useless. That would be far away from the truth. Reality still is that for setup data load and certain types of conversion, ExcelToCi remains a very intuitive and powerful tool.

What have been your experiences with ExcelToCI? Have you used it for massive data loading?