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Business Adapter -> Importing Organizational Units

Hi All,

I am working on importing organizational units from our HR system. It is possible for Organizational Units to move within the tree as we go through re-organizations. 

 

Is it possible to import organizational units without providing the full path but still relate to a parent organizational unit?

(1) Reply
mfranz
By Level 17 Champion
Level 17 Champion

Hi,

This is assuming FNMS on-prem:

1. As long as you have a unique identifier, e.g. an ID, as part of the name, description or other field, you should be able to identify the "old" and "new" position within the tree. With that, a complex Business Import can move units through the tree. Is usually involves the following steps:

  • Compare your new data set to the existing one and identify "gaps". There's usually 3 cases:
    • Completely new business units
    • Moved business units
    • Completely removed business units

"Moved" is, from FNMS perspective, a mix of  "new" and "removed". So you'll have to act clever to create the impression of moving stuff:

  1. Identify moving business units, old entries (IDs) and their respective new ones (IDs).
  2. Create the new entry
  3. Move all relevant entities from the old unit to the new one (computers, users, assets, purchases, contracts, etc.)
  4. Remove the old entry
  5. Possibly clean up no longer needed parts of the tree

Some thoughts:

  • There's possibly additional complexity, e.g. if you scoped accounts on these business units.
  • This can be applied to all types of organizational structure: Corporate Units, Locations, Cost Centers.

2. It depends what you want to do.

  • If you just want to assign an element, you can just go with the unit name (full path not needed). That is only, as long as that unit name is unique within your tree.
  • If you want to create new units within the tree, you'll have to provide a full path. At least, if you want to utilize the Business Import logic.
    • You yould try to figure out the full path, when only the parent element is given, using some SQL. And then have the Business Import work with that.
    • Or you could circumvent the Business Import mechanics and use some stored procedures to insert your stuff directy.

Best regards,

Markward