Clear Target before Import

I have a users list wherein the users have read or write access to different companies. I have also created a security dashboard with an import action wherein administrators can give or takeaway access to certain companies for certain users. The problem I am facing is that in spite having the correct import action the new company access data doesn't overwrite the new one. Hence I am trying to create a new action that would wipe out the existing access data in the users list before importing the new data. For this new action I am trying to import a blank module wherein there is nothing in the company read and write columns but somehow anaplan doesn't seem to recognise blanks while importing. As an example

User A currently has write access to Company A,B,C,D and read access to Company E,F,G,H

Now I go to my security dashboard and make some changes after which User A has write access to Company E,G,H and read access to Company A,C,D.

Before running the import action to import these changes to the users list, I want an action that would clear the company read and write columns in the users list. Is there any way I can do that?

 

Answers

  • Hi @rookieanaplaner ,

     

    Have you tried importing line items formatted by "no data" to clear the target?

     

    Hope this helps,

    Ege

  • @rookieanaplaner Indeed, if you change the security, the import action that updates the security will merge and add the new Company security together with the old ones. 

     

    In these cases, I build a separate import action to delete the existing security for all the Selective Access Lists using the "None" element available in the import action.

    The trick is to map on a list, the "Top level" value of that list into the "None" element that is available when you create the import action. You can follow the below steps:

     

    1. Have a module with users and a line-item formatted text or  list with the hard-coded values of Top Level  elements per every selective Access lists (in your case something like "Total Company")

     

    2. Create an import action to update security and map the Top Level line-items to the correspondent "None" and give a name like  "Delete security setup"

     

    alexpavel_0-1645525183815.png

     

    If you have composite lists, you need to launch this action only for the Top level which is on Level 1 list. 

     

    Launching this action will clean all the elements that are setup on the "Write" and "Read" columns (including the other Levels of a composite multilevel list).

     

    3. Launch the "normal" action with the latest security setup on "Write" and "Read" columns.

     

    Hope it helps

    Alex