How do you use DataPort?

[Logan Rhodehamel]

I'm looking for feedback of the following nature:

What kinds of tasks do you use DataPort for? Describe some of your common routines.

What things does DataPort do well?

What things does DataPort not do well enough?

What is the least useful feature of DataPort? The most?

[dc8johnson]

We use the CSV import to bulk load users. That seems to work well.

We use the XML import for orders. It's a multistage process where we start with an Excel spreadsheet, run a query against the store database and then copy/paste some XML created by the Excel into a new XML document which we load using DataPort. Not simple, but better than manually creating the orders.

We've also created our own reports to pull order/orderitem/customer data in a flat file format.

[calvis]

Hi Logan, thanks for bringing this topic up.

We find that the DataPort tool is a critical part to our business. We use it each business day to export orders to XML format and from there we have other mission critical applications that utilize the XML data to do sales receipts and shipping labels. We plan on using it for other functions as well in the future.

We would like to offer a few suggestions. We would like to see an 'Open" button by the "Download" button on the Customized Order Download (this could be applied to other download screens as well) area. This would allow us to open the file with a pre-associated application (for a XML file we would like it to open in our text editor). Right now multiple steps are needed to open a file. Second, we need a new XML tag <ExportDate> which would include the date that the download occurred. Currently we have to do a search and replace on the payment date and change it to the export date. (We do this because the payment date may not be the same date as the date we create the sales receipt i.e. weekend orders)

I hope that the DataPort continues to be a part of AC8 and beyond as we find it very useful.

-Charles

[jmestep]

One thing it might be good to add is email list subscriber export. We have sites with a lot of emails and the export in the admin page times out unless we add in a really, really long timeout period.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

I hope that the DataPort continues to be a part of AC8 and beyond as we find it very useful.

I have no indication that we will eliminate the functions of DataPort. One thing that we have talked about (just in passing) is whether the functions of dataport could be served through our merchant UI. Take for example your request that the order export file be easier to open... if that were a file streamed out to your browser, your browser would automatically handle the opening for you using whatever you associated with XML file.

In any case, this thread is not meant to decide if DataPort is a useful tool. It's more to understand how DataPort is used and to get ideas for what we could do better or with more convenience.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

One thing it might be good to add is email list subscriber export. We have sites with a lot of emails and the export in the admin page times out unless we add in a really, really long timeout period.

Can you tell me an approximate number of emails you are working with in your lists? You can PM it if it's confidential info.

[jmestep]

It was 4300+. I had to set the timeout to 720. I think a lot of the problem was because of it getting other user info, like firstname, lastname, etc. When I put a query to pull only email addresses into our report wizard, it went fine.

[crazyjoe]

We use Dataport mostly for bulk importing products.

I would be interested in a built in scheduler.

[Shopping Cart Admin]

Hello All,

The dataport is now an active topic for development, per Logan's earlier comments we are strongly considering building the functionality of the dataport into the application directly rather than having a separate application to maintain. I would like to get everyone's feedback on this!

One thing that we have talked about (just in passing) is whether the functions of dataport could be served through our merchant UI. Take for example your request that the order export file be easier to open... if that were a file streamed out to your browser, your browser would automatically handle the opening for you using whatever you associated with XML file.

[jmestep]

I think that that might be a good idea if it doesn't hurt site performance, especially if we can customize some of the code. Even if we can't, I think it would clear up some of the version mis-match errors and allow people with Mac computers to run it. Also, most of our clients don't even know it exists until they ask us to price a customization to do some of the things they could do with the dataport. We do have some instances where pages time out, like the email list export, so it would be good to add some code to handle a long-running process like that. You do that with the product feeds- something similar to that would be good.

[calvis]

I have no problem with having Dataport built into the application as long as it does not affect performance like Judy said. We get timeouts with our abandoned basket reports all the time and can imagine what will happen with exporting a year's worth of orders or customer data will do especially with the bigger stores. Downloading daily orders into ABLE XML via the web site would be much more beneficially than firing up Dataport each time. We also need a way to import our UPS tracking numbers into the orders which is done via Dataport.

We rely on Dataport pretty extensively everyday and hopefully most of the features could be duplicated via a web service.