[SIMS] Bulk import staff email address

[matt40k]

Anyone know how to bulk import staff email addresses into SIMS?

No? Just add 256 email addresses in about 5 mins. Wonder if I should say it took me all week and have a holiday?

(If you haven't realised, I'm a bit impressed with myself... and the Capita business objects)

[GREED]

hang on, you have done this or want to know? If the former... do tell!

[matt40k]

I've done it, I wrote a little app that does it.

[steve]

You should sell this to capita as they say its not possible!

We manually did staff emails. We now need to do student emails - all 1800

[scholarpack]

Is XML import not possible?

[matt40k]

@scholarpack - nope, not natively, you would have to write something.

You should sell this to capita as they say its not possible!

We manually did staff emails. We now need to do student emails - all 1800

Anything possible, if you pay for it, I'm sure they could send someone out for day to import them.

[GREED]

So I'm guessing it searches for the unique record and inserts directly into the SQL record... interesting!

[matt40k]

Basically. Uses Capita business objects, if it finds more then one record for the name, it won't import. It's pretty basic app, but it does the job.

[rpwillis]

You should sell this to capita as they say its not possible!

It certainly is possible. I recently had this requirement for one of my customers. In fact it was a bit more complex than that. They are using Sims Learning Gateway and the email address which is inserted into AD is non-deterministic amongst those which are set as Main. We think it's the first email address created (whether home, work or other) which has the main flag set, but aren't sure. So in the end the requirement was to:

1. Unset the main flag from any existing home email addresses.
2. Delete any existing work email addresses.
3. Enter the school email address as the main work email.

Didn't turn out to be too hard and they've now got up to date email address for all their staff and students.

In fact I would actually recommend, that if you are using Sims Learning Gateway, not setting any home addresses as Main or they might end up in Active Directory and potentially accessible through SharePoint or Exchange.

[GREED]

Basically. Uses Capita business objects, if it finds more then one record for the name, it won't import. It's pretty basic app, but it does the job.

I never got the chance to use Capita BO (!) before I stopped working with it, but sounds like it has loads of potential!

[vikpaw]

@scholarpack - nope, not natively, you would have to write something.
Anything possible, if you pay for it, I'm sure they could send someone out for day to import them.

There was a thread about this on SupportNet and i suggested that Capita would do it for a fee, but nobody followed it up as far as i'm aware.

I've done it, I wrote a little app that does it.

I'm impressed. Is it something that you would be willing to share, if that is even allowed? Also, now you've got your head around the business objects how easy would it be to modify it to import student emails.

All this would be simple if we could hack into SQL, but doing it with the BO would be cool and legal

[matt40k]

Students wouldn't be too much trouble. Sharing is a no-no, two reasons, firstly I coded it at work, so my work would want to charge for it and secondary, Capita would charge for non-Suffolk schools.

[vikpaw]

i see. why would capita charge? nevermind. what if someone here wanted to pursue a similar app, is helping someone else allowed? if it's offline...?

[GREED]

Matt.

I fully agree that is the way it should be. Intellectual property rights etc.

However, could I ask you to put up on here a piece of sample code (not anything to do with your creation) so I can understand the language used and how things fit together, I am very interested in this! (or PM)

[matt40k]

It's pretty much what you would expect. Searching\browsing\etc is like in SIMS and the business objects are like you would expect.