The Advanced CSV connector is in Early Access. If you're interested, you can click here to apply to our Early Adopter Program.
Note: The Advanced CSV connector is only available to Premium subscribers. Contact Inventory Planner Support to learn more about upgrading to Premium.
To set up the Advanced CSV connector, you must follow these five steps:
Generate an SSH public key
Enter your SSH key into the Advanced CSV connector settings and click Connect
Set up the directories structure and upload a warehouse file and vendor file at a minimum
Click Check to ensure the mandatory files are available
Return to Connections and warehouses and click Finish configuration and start initial sync
Generating an SSH public key
The Advanced CSV connector works by creating a secure Azure file storage for your connection. You’ll access the storage using an SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol, or SSH File Transfer Protocol) client.
To use SFTP, you’ll need to create an SSH key pair to authenticate with Inventory Planner.
Entering your SSH key
To connect the Advanced CSV connector, go to Account > Settings > New Connection, and select the Advanced CSV connector from the list.
Set the connector’s name and currency.
Then, copy and paste your SSH public key into the box provided.
Finally, click “Connect”.
Inventory Planner will then create a secure file storage space for your account.
Setting up the directories structure and uploading your files
You will need to set up the following directories, with these exact names, to be able to upload the files:
sales_order
stock_order
stock_order_status
variant
variant_component
variant_vendor
variant_warehouse
vendor
warehouse
The file name does not matter - the connector determines the type based on the directory they're loaded under.
The initial data sync must include two mandatory files:
Warehouse
Vendor
The other files you can include are:
Variant
Variant warehouse
Variant vendor
Variant component (if setting up bundles/assemblies)
Sales order
Stock order
Stock order status (optional if your purchase order statuses are standard or use string matching)
For the first sync of a particular type, you’ll need to include all the data you want to sync to Inventory Planner. In subsequent syncs, you only need to send files to Inventory Planner when you want to update the relevant data (i.e. in incremental loads). If the data hasn’t changed, you do not need to include the files.
Check the files
On the connector settings page, you must click the “Check” button to ensure the mandatory files are available for the first sync. If they’re not, Inventory Planner will alert you.
Finishing the configuration
If the check runs without any errors, you must then go back to Account > Settings > Connections and warehouses and click Finish configuration and start initial sync to run the first sync.
You may wish to add all of your files via SFTP before finishing the configuration to ensure the sync only begins once you're ready.
Checking the sync
Once the first sync has run, you can go to Account > Settings > Connections and warehouses, then click into the Advanced CSV connector settings to view a summary of all syncs that have run to date.
If Inventory Planner has flagged any errors, it will display a count in the "Errors" column. Clicking on the error count will open a new page displaying the detailed error report.
Here, you can see which file threw an error (if you loaded more than one for that type of file), the specific error, and on which row the error appeared.
If the error is with the overall file format, such as an invalid column that makes every row fail, it will only be reported once, rather than for every row.