Your experience with DataPort and when to use it?

[NC Software]

Hello all,

I'm just about done with the design of my AC 7 store and I'll be migrating from AC 5.5. Small catalog relatively speaking so it's not really a big deal in recreating products. The problem is of course the ability for a customer to login and view prior orders which also contain their ESD information (registration codes), etc. I'm not sure if the categories and products need to be migrated to maintain that capability, etc. etc. I would rather start clean with categories, products, kits, ESD and just port over user info. Also, if I port data over now is there a way to capture new information after a set date? It would be nice to capture everything through yesterday then at a later date pickup today forward for the final info. Is this possible?

Please share your experiences and uses of the DataPort utility so I can learn how it works, see what's important to bring over from AC 5.5 and what's best to NOT bring over.

Thank you.

[jmestep]

I don't think you would need to bring category and product info over so the old orders would be OK, since the product names, etc are stored in the order item table.
As far as date cutoff, you could do that by changing the code in your Able5 export page tofilter by date. I have done that before.

[Naveed]

When migrating from AC5x to AC7x please keep following points in your mind:

1. Before starting anything have a close look at:
"Migrating to AbleCommerce 7" guide
http://help.ablecommerce.com/upgrades/A ... erce_7.htm
and "DataPort Wiki Help"
http://wiki.ablecommerce.com/index.php/ ... rt_Utility

2. It is recommended to use the latest release of AbleCommerce 7.x.x. Current release is AbleCommerce 7.0.3.
http://help.ablecommerce.com/upgrades/a ... _7.0.3.htm

3. Use The latest version of DataPort to get most appropriate import from AC5x. Because for latest versions all known issues regarding AC5x import are fixed.

4. DataPort is capable to import most of your AC5x store data to AC7. To have all associations correctly mapped, it is recommended to completely import your AC5x data. However you can hide/un-publish the catalog items from AC5x if you don't want to display them on store retail side.

5. DataPort AC5x import feature provides details debug logging option. You can use the detailed log to find and fix any issues during import process.

6. Before using DataPort on Live stores try to play with it on local development installs. This way you will be able to avoid un-predictable results.

7. Always take database backups before using DataPort with your live stores.

[NC Software]

Thank you. I'll re-read and then experiment after backing up the DB.