This document outlines the enhancement we’ve made to allow for the automation of importing data from another system into Apricot. Starting September 18th, 2020, clients are able to ensure data integrity through scheduled and automated data transfers as well as drastically reduce the amount of time spent on traditional data transfers.

After the feature is activated, an admin user can navigate to the Apricot Settings page to be able to gather their SFTP location and configuration settings. This will assist them in the setup of their integration on the source system’s side or from within a middleware tool. We’ve also added a field for the admin user to enter their SSH Public Key. This is a secure way to access the SFTP folder location from a 3rd party tool. There are plenty of how-to articles online that describe how to generate an SSH Public key. Here is an example for a mac and here is an example for Windows.

From there users will generate an Apricot Import Template as they normally would, but with one exciting addition that we think you'll love! As part of this release we have also added the ability to update the program assignment from within the import file. Meaning you can assign different programs for each row in your file vs having to break up your uploads into multiple imports.

If you need to record multiple programs you can do so by separating the program ID using the “|” symbol just as you would with a multi-select field. You can either choose to assign programs from within the file or they can use the previous method of the prompt in the UI. If the program field column doesn’t exist in the file, the UI will know to prompt the user instead.

From there, the end user will take their generated template file to use as reference for how to format the data from the source system. The end user can either use the source system’s ability to send data to a specific SFTP (if it has one), they can hire a 3rd party firm to assist with the build out of their integration, or build out in house if they have the technical skill set. During the integration buildout they will need to figure out how to automate the process of moving their exported source files into our SFTP input folder. This is where they will use the configuration settings and SSH Public key described above to connect to the Apricot SFTP location.

Once their file has landed into our SFTP input folder it will automatically be picked up and imported into Apricot. The file will disappear from the folder once it has been picked up for processing.

Once the file has completed processing and the data is in Apricot, you can navigate to the Imports page to view the status. Here you will find an “Automated” tag for every file that was imported via the SFTP folder. Files that do not have the “Automated” tag were imported using the user interface.