Customising formats

This description is intended for anyone wanting to specially customise the format of the data they are going to export from or import to Visma Business. The format is used for EBF, EDI, factoring, Wage file from activities and exporting to the year-end closing program.

Intended user group

This document is primarily intended for systems administrators and dealers. You should have a good technical understanding of both Visma Business and file management to be able to customise your own formats.

Brief overview of import format

The term import format is somewhat misleading as the same format is used for both exporting data (e.g. exporting a payment request to a bank) and importing data (e.g. importing return data). In any case, we will use this term in this description.

What is an import definition?

An import definition is a text file containing a specification of the fields which are exported from/imported to Visma Business.

This format specifies the link between the real data in Visma Business and the data as located in the text file. The definition also contains a description of the fields' formats, mutual location, etc.

When should you define your own formats?

Visma has customised a number of formats. These include, for instance, formats for the commonest banks, formats customised for EDI import/export of Visma Business internal formats, as well as various factoring formats. If you need to use an exchange format which Visma Business is not set up for, you should proceed as follows:

Find out the type of formats and procedures the bank / your partner is currently using. You may be able to use one of the existing formats directly. Visma Business uses Z Data converter, which supports all the bank formats in Scandinavia, as well as those specially ordered like DTA. Z Data currently supports the following bank formats in the old Converter: Telepay (Norway) Direkte remittering (Norway) BBS EDIFACT (International) UNITel (Denmark) Unitel internasionalt (Denmark) DDB (Denmark) Den Danske Bank Kasel (Denmark) Jyske Bank (Denmark) SydBank (Denmark) Solo (Finland) Nordea Postgirot (Sweden) Bankgirot (Sweden) SISU (Sweden) DTA (Switzerland). Only some older versions of EFT systems use imp files.
Find out whether Visma Business should be set up for use with this bank / partner. If the bank/partner is of a type or size that other Visma Business customers will need to communicate with it you should contact Visma to request the development of a new format.
Assess whether you will customise the format yourself, or request Visma for assistance.

The rest of this section is based on the assumption that you want to customise a format yourself.

Communication between Visma Business and the import format

When exporting data you must indicate to Visma Business which data fields you will be using and where in the file you want to place the data fields.

When importing data you must also indicate to Visma Business which data fields you want to update.

You establish the link between the data in the file and the data in Visma Business by specifying each single data field in the file and linking it to a (logical) field in Visma Business (by using a logical field name). You establish this link in line type c in the import definition files (see description in Creating a new format).

When import filters are used during the import or export process Visma Business carries out a conversion between the logical field names specified in the import format file and the actual database fields or variables in Visma Business. If you modify a name in a logical field name, this will result in the field not being recognised and in it not being processed further by Visma Business.

Merk: Visma Business can find the definitions in the /imp/ directory. The files should have the suffix imp for import and exp for export, for future maintenance and support. If you make changes in one of the files which will be installed with Visma Business, you must change the name of this file, so that an upgrade does not overwrite the changes.

XML import does not use imp files, but interprets the tags within the segments <OrderHead> </OrderHead> and <OrderLine> </OrderLine>. The tags must consist of valid fields for import. The tags consist of the SQL name of the table, and the field name separated by a point/underscore, or External ID for the field with or without an underscore as a start. This means that only order head and order line tags can be interpreted.