exporting/migrating Flags/Groups

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huttarl
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exporting/migrating Flags/Groups

Post by huttarl »

Hello,
I'm another Mac user who is in the process of migrating from DM to TntMPD (for various reasons). First, let me say thank you for the years of good use we have gotten out of DM: it has been very helpful for us! And your tireless answering of questions has been invaluable.

My question: In the process of migrating our data, we exported data from DM to a CSV file, and also to EXCEL (so we could see the column headers). In the exported file, there are 10 columns labeled Flag1 through Flag10. I need to figure out what each of these means, so as to import them meaningfully into MPD.

I understand from elsewhere in the forums that these flags are the Groups in DM 6. In DM I can view the groups, and can see who is in each group (very handy!). But I don't seem to be able to see which Group corresponds to which Flag. In one place the groups are listed in alphabetical order; in another place, they're in another order, which I thought might correspond to Flag1...Flag10, but looking at the data it doesn't seem to be so.

I could go through the data (TRUE/FALSE in the Excel export, comparing with who's in what group) in order to figure out which group corresponds to which flag. But that seems time-consuming and error-prone. Is there an easier way?

Thanks,
Lars
jmuehleisen
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Re: exporting/migrating Flags/Groups

Post by jmuehleisen »

Thanks for your good question.

In DM 5, the "user defined groups" was managed through the "flag" fields in the donor master file.

This was very easy to work with, but ended up giving a limit of just 10 "flags" or "groups."

In DM 6, some additional tables were created to manage the new "groups" feature which is far more flexible.

In the DM 5 -> DM 6 data migration, those flag1, flag2, etc. fields were converted into data into these new group tables.

So, the end result is that these flag fields in the donor table are no longer used. This does make migrating the data to another program (Excel, tntMPD, or whatever) a bit more complicated.

I do not know if tntMPD provides a way to import "group" information or not. If so, I'll be happy to add a feature to DM to export that data in a way that would be meaningful to tntMPD.

Do you happen to know? I've looked at the program but have not seen an option for this, but perhaps there is a "data migration tool" available that I'm not aware of.
John Muehleisen
Mentoring Emerging Christian Leadership in Africa for Excellence / Integrity / Innovation
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