Business Unit Import

The import of groups, positions, and user data is crucial for managing organisational structures. As mass data is to be updated regularly, e.g. once a week, manual updating would not be practicable for larger organisations.

The import needs to be configured in the Configuration Manager.

Basic Priciple

Groups contain users and positions, positions contain users. Therefore the whole organisational structure import process should be scheduled in the following way:

User import (existing) > Position import (new) → Group import (new) This order will minimize the number of invalid object assignments.

This depends on the job configuration and is not an implementation task.

The XML structure is defined by Scheer IMC as a standard structure. Customers are responsible for creating a valid XML file.

The import is triggered by a job. In the GUI, it can also be triggered manually in addition to this job. This can be done separately for positions and groups.

The import starts by loading and validating the current XML file. If the validation is successful, the database update starts.

Group Import

The main purpose of the group import concerning talent management is to create or update an organisational structure. New groups are created during import, and existing groups are updated. The update includes relocations and deletions within the group structure.

The new group import does not replace the existing LDAP import. It supports organisational unit and standard group import but is not enhanced in functional scope.

imc Learning Suite expects an XML file to process its data into the existing organisational structure. Customers are responsible for generating this XML file.

The import always expects an XML file containing the entire structure of a defined main group. Groups that are not integrated into the XML file are removed from the database.

All attributes and their values included in the XML file are imported. If the values are changed in imc Learning Suite, the next import overwrites these changes.

To make attributes read-only in imc Learning Suite, they must be configured accordingly so that the corresponding field in imc Learning Suite becomes read-only.

Import Specifications

• The import will ignore if an imported object is locked in the LMS, because edited by another user. There will be a mechanism which will forbid the user to save his changes.

• The import will be restricted to one main group by configuration. If a customer wants to import several main groups he has to configure separate imports for this.

• The main group folder must be created manually in the LMS. When it is updated by import the first time it receives an external ID and can no longer be administered like a not-imported object.

• It can be specified if the import of an empty field will ignore or delete an existing entry.

• If groups are created, the clearances of the direct parent group are written to the new group. If not possible: write standard ACL rights.

• If a group is deleted in source system, the corresponding group is also deleted in imc Learning Suite after the import of the updated xml-file. Child groups of the deleted groups should also be deleted in DB if not moved to another parent based on the structure update. Remark: No influence on reporting, because data from the past come from history table copies.

• If the creator of a new group (creator by configuration) is not allowed to create groups on GUI, no special action is to be performed. The group will be created with him as creator.

• Group attribute fields can contain HTML strings. The import exchange format (xml) must handle this correctly.

• Note for later functional specifications: Depending on data history mechanism it should be avoided that each import update causes a history table entry, even if there is nothing changed for the group.

Validation Steps

If the XML file does not contain valid data, imc Learning Suite must not start the import into the database without a prior check. Otherwise, parts of the structure could be updated while others are not because the update was cancelled. This could lead to major data inconsistencies.

Therefore, when imc Learning Suite receives an XML file, the following validations are necessary:

Table 1: Pre-validation for group import