App Manager allows you to export and import configuration using excel spreadsheets

Using excel spreadsheets you can benefit from quickly creating many objects and importing them with one button.

Importing and Exporting spreadsheets

In the App Manager site, if you open the Properties for an App or an Object

Hint: You can also Ctrl + click on the item you want to view to immediately open the Properties.

You will see the following Tools section underneath its settings

Export to Excel

This button will download a spreadsheet containing objects under the item that you are viewing.

If you opened the properties for an App (Edge ACM, AUTOSOL MQTT, etc.) you will get all of the objects under this application

If you opened the properties for an Object (a folder, a tag group, etc.) you will get only the children under this object.

Import from Excel

Here you can browse for an excel sheet in your file directory by clicking Choose Files and selecting an .xlsx file

Once loaded, click Import from Excel to continue through the import process.

Editing an excel spreadsheet

Excel configuration can vary in difficulty. Most data types are easy to understand but some configuration items can be complex data structures that have to be represented in certain formats in excel.

In general most values are straight forward.

The importer feature will cast your input value into whatever data type it requires.

There is however more complex data formats that we also support in excel.

Arrays

Arrays are lists of values. The values can vary in type from integers, to strings, etc.

The server expects data in this JSON format.

"groupids": [1, 2]

In excel we use (index) to represent the entries

You can add as many entries to the array in this manner. Empty values would be set to default.

Objects

Objects are key value structures that can contain one or more keys and values of any type.

The server expects data in this JSON format.

"myobject": {
    "key1": "value1",
    "key2": 100
}

In excel we use _ to represent the relation

You can add the keys you want to set, unset keys would be set to their default values

More complex data: Array of Objects

An example of this is trigger conditions in Edge ACM tags.

The configuration appears like this in the site:

This data then gets translated to

"triggerconditions": [
      {
          "condition": "Greater Than or Equal to",
          "value": 1,
          "quality": "High"
      },
      {
          "condition": "Equals",
          "value": 0,
          "quality": "Triggered"
      }
],

The equivalent in excel is complex at first, but easy to replicate

To explain,

triggerconditions(0)_condition indicates that this property is part of an array of objects, where this specific value for condition in the first (index 0) entry of the array.

triggerconditions(1)_quality would indicate the quality in the second (index 1) entry and so on.

<key>(index)_<inner_key> allows us to parse the contents of a grid and transform the data into a more complex shape.

Index always starts at 0!

Excel Spreadsheets