Excel Import into OnBase

[Utavia_Williams]

Hello everybody,

I've been trying to figure out how to get an Excel file into OnBase all day. These Excel files do not come with an indexing file and are produced based on text-based reports. I think the solution is converting the Excel file to an XML file and using an XML DIP process. When I try to import it with the process I do have, I get invalid or missing file path tag in my system verification report. Support articles say that this means my document type must be configured as an E-form instead of a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet. If I switch over to an E-form, though, it just returns a white page with a bunch of gibberish. Anyone else have this issue?

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Are you looking to store the records contained within the MS Excel file as e-forms within onbase or the spreadsheet/workbook in its entirety as an office document?  If you are looking to store the spreadsheet/workbook in its entirety as an office document, then i believe i am understanding the issue to be that the excel file(s) did not come with a manifest file for indexing during a D.I.P.   Is this the correct understanding? 

MS Excel should be one of the file formats for default file format in configuration client for document types. 

There is also an option to create new file types and define them to the system in configuration client under the document menu. 

The documents should be able to be imported, but would need indexing.  

If a scheduled D.I.P. is what is desired, then there would need to be some coding to extract data from withing the Excel file and make a manifest file for indexing .. assuming that the information for indexing is contained somewhere consistently within the files. 

There is also WorkView which is an excellent Excel spreadsheet/workbook replacement where we can build relational database applications within onbase ( tables of data for user interaction along with relationships to documents and the power of Workflow )  

i don't know if any of this helped or not, but something we've done that comes to mind is to take a spreadsheet and save it as a .csv and then setup a D.I.P. process to use that as a manifest.  As it reads in the records, they go into workflow as an e-form and we make a Unity form from them.  If this is what the goal is, then be sure to scrub your data and use quotations to qualify text where necessary. 

There is also a way to use an Excel spreadsheet to define your WorkView application, and onbase will build it for you based on how you've filled out the MS Excel spreadsheet.  Be careful to follow the format detailed by hyland for this in their MRGs. 

i hope something in all of this helped. 

best of luck to you, and to all of us who are leveraging onbase regularly.. 

[#3]

where i refer to an e-form, i am referring to importing an html file into the system doc-type for html and then dipping in the data and filing it against it.  there is an MRG that gives the syntax for referencing KWs in the html 

[Utavia_Williams]

Hey James,

Yes, ideally, I'd like an Excel file to be imported into OnBase and stay in its Excel format.

I was a bit worried I'd have to code to make my own index file, but it seems like that's the only solution. It's very odd that I wasn't able to find much documentation regarding an answer before this.

I tried to look into the Workview option, but it appears that my site does not have a license to it.

Thank you for your detailed response! I really appreciate it.

[Utavia_Williams]

Just an FYI - I ended up making a Powershell script to extract the data I needed for the DIP file. Seems to work well. Thanks.