DIXF is treated by many consultants like it is a monster that is hard to use and control since we all have to figure it out by ourselves somehow but, when you get used to it: It makes things really easy. I imported millions of items, variants, barcodes, customers, locations etc. with this module. And here is how I use it for warehouse locations.

The simplest way to use this module when you have it up and running is importing records from a file. This is a relatively easy process when the records are warehouse locations.

1. I always turn off the validations in DIXF to make the import process run faster and there is not much to worry about, you can just check if Location ProfileIDs exists really and so ZoneIDs etc. And if so, just create a data source for CSV file as below at Data management/Configure data source:
2. And set a processing group as below at Data Management/Templates:
3. Open the excel workbook below, fill it with your client’s data:
   • Excel workbook: Excel file – Import sample locations
4. Save your file as CSV (Comma delimited) as can be found in this sample: CSV file – Import sample locations
5. Hit “Import” in Data management module to begin and fill the form as below.
   • (You do not have to check “Truncate entity data”, I just don’t like old data in my staging tables)
6. Make sure you see the tick icon next to your entity on right:
7. Hit “import” button on top and wait for the message that says your task completed successfully on top with an instant messenger icon, then hit “View staging data” on screen to open the form below and click on “Validate all” button to make sure there aren’t any errors:
8. After you complete the validation, just hit “Copy data to target” button and open the form below, then hit OK:
9. Now, you will see the page below, just hit “Run”:
10. When the screen below is back, you are all set. To see your imported record you can just hit “Target” button (Mind that it opens the form with “Use warehouse management processes=No” filter) or you can open Modules/Warehouse Management/Setup/Warehouse /Locations to see your new locations:

We did it! But imagine, you will probably share the file you had in step #3 and your client will fill it, send it back to you at 2 in the morning! Either the ZoneID or LocationProfileID or even the warehouse will not exist in the environment. Then what? You can’t reach them in the middle of night, so you have to wait for the next day for them to explain and fix the file. Isn’t this time consuming and unsustainable? This is why you better use SQL together with DIXF functionalities. Just create a new database to keep and manage your master data. How to do it? That will be available in my next post!