Hi John:

Not sure if this is the correct forum for my question (since it's specific to SeedCode Complete), but here goes:

As you know, I currently use the previous version SeedCode Complete (for FM 8.5+), in a rather extensively modified form.

Now I have two goals:

1) To build out my shiny new copy of Complete (for FM 11) so that its interface file corresponds (more-or-less) to my current solution's interface, and its data file corresponds to my current solution's data;

2) Then, to import my existing data.

I'm afraid I may have overlooked something in the documentation you've created to accompany "Complete for FM 11" -- but I can't find any information addressing these two specific issues.

Can you steer me in the right direction?

Yours,
Jim Recht

Hey Jim,

We have some notes about importing your contacts here: http://www.seedcode.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.p ... ngContacts

But since your solution is specific to what you've build, I don't think you'll find much in our docs about how to add your existing features, layouts etc to Complete. You just have a lot of work ahead of you.

I can give you some guidelines though that we use when moving big features from one solution to another. It's all about the order you do things. So let's say you have a layout or part of a layout you want to move from one file to another...

- Begin by adding the layout's table to the new file if it isn't there already. Most of your big tables will already be in Complete (Contacts, Invoices) but they'll have different fields.

- Then relate that tables to others on the graph and clean up and calcs that were commented out when you imported the table in (or pasted fields in)

- Then add any value lists the layout or its scripts may need. Same with custom functions.

- Now create a new blank layout for this layout, giving it the correct name and basing it on the right table.

- Paste or import any scripts the layout uses into the new file (everything you've done so far is to make sure that script find everything it needs when it arrives and does so without error).

- Finally you paste the layout contents into the new layout: again, those fields and buttons should find the fields and scripts they're looking for. The whole trick is to first create the objects subsequently imported objects will want to find when they arrive.

As you can tell, it is more of an art than a science and we do offer consulting if you'd like to know more.

Hope that helps,

John

Thank you John: your reply is super-helpful as usual!

Same boat, different lake...

I've done all my mods, getting round to importing the data from Complete v1 solution.

I'm pretty comfortable importing directly from our existing Complete file, lining up the fields as best I can. Some data doesn't match due to changes in in the new Complete and also in my customisation of it. None of it is mission critical though.

I took a look at the import utility in Extras but it only deals with contacts right? And as soon as I need to deal with my customised Complete with half a dozen additional fields I'd have to start customising the import utility...

I'm just checking here in case I'm suffering from blind overconfidence and am missing something - don't want to perform the imports more than a couple of times
thanks

You're not missing anything; the import utility is for folks who don't have the confidence to import from a flat contacts file into Complete's relational tables. In your case importing directly into the data tables makes sense. ... a "couple of times" is kind of how I do it also.