Interpret Import Employees

Entering your employees one at a time into the TRACCESS system can be overwhelming; however, if you have another computer program that contains all of your employees' personal information, you may be able to put this information into an import file. This allows you to quickly enter your employees' information into the system using the Import Employees function.

You can import any file that contains character separated values (either comma or tab-delimited). The most common file extensions for this information is .txt, .csv, or .xls. Each of these files can be opened using either Microsoft Excel or Notepad.

Once you have exported your personnel information from your other application, a few steps must be completed:

For example, you may wish to have information such as Date of Hire in TRACCESS. This is not currently a default Property, and you would therefore have to add it in the Object Definitions dialog, under the Employee Object. In this case, Date of Hire would be a Date/Time property and would follow the Create a Date/ Time Type Property procedure.

By default, the Employee properties that are shipped with TRACCESS CI are shown in the screen capture.

A list of these properties are also provided in a CSV file. You may wish to either use this file as a template to create your import file, or cut and paste the Property names on top of your file. Property names MUST BE SPELLED CORRECTLY in order for the import to be successful. The Property names are also listed, and described in Import Employees Legend.

All Date/ Time properties must be the same, and this format will be indicated at the start of the Import. Date Patterns can be: mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss; dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss; or yyyy,mm,dd hh:mm:ss. If the hours, minutes and seconds are not entered, TRACCESS will interpret a date as being set at 12:00 a.m. of that day.

Please note:  If Microsoft Excel converts your dates to be mmm/dd/yyyy, this format will still be accepted. The main thing to remember is to indicate which comes first: the month, the day or the year, regardless of how many values are represented.

When saving an Excel document, the Save As type field must be set to Unicode Text.

When saving a Notepad document, the Save As type field must be set to All Files, and the Encoding field must be set to either Unicode or UTF-8. The UTF-8 option is preferred.

 

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