Each year or even every few years you might want to consider the option of starting with a fresh database and only filling it with information that is current at the time. This is by no means required, as you can run Vinsight continuously through the years, but it is an option.
The reasons you might consider this are:
1. You may wish to have a ‘spring clean’ where by old codes and methods of doing things that are obselete are left behind in an old database that you can access when needed
2. Your database will be smaller and therefore faster.
The down side is that there will be some work to do (after all this is a spring clean), your tracbility will still be intact but will span 2 databases.
OVERVIEW OF STEPS NEEDED
1. Obtain a new blank database for your new data to go into
2. Export your old lists of data to somewhere that you can do your ruthless cleaning. Can I suggest excel.
3. Delete you old codes, tanks barrels etc and refactor any existing code to use best practice or to what you are most comfortable with
4. Import the new clean data to the new clean database
5. Finally import any wine by doing Bulk Receivals and do a Stock Level Adjustment to get stock levels correct.
STEPS TO COPY DATA IN AND OUT OF VINSIGHT
Firstly with any of these steps you could/should use a copy of your excel spreadsheet as an intermediate point to do any mass changes or move columns, hide columns etc rather than your original spreadsheet, or rather than going straight from one copy to another
Prepare your source data:
To copy all the rows of a form in Vinsight, right click the form and select datasheet view.
Click the top left hand box to select all columns and all rows then copy this.
This is where excel is useful because you can change your dataformat without damaging the real source of your data.
Paste your source data into excel, the field names will show at the top
Ensure the the source of the data, exactly matches the column layout of the destination when the columns are ‘left aligned’ ie from the left to right. Surplus or insufficient columns on the right hand end will be ignored. This may mean you will need to rearrange some of your columns or insert blank or ‘0’ column placeholders if you don’t have certain data already defined.
Add dummy or blank columns in your temporary datasource (excel) if necessary.
If you are looking at changing any of your codes then this might be a good time to do it, making use of the excel find and replace in particular columns.
If going from and to Vinsight then the column orders should already be the same.
As a suggestion to minimise the to-and-fro-ing between old and new, you might like to export all your data to excel first, before being importing. You could put data from each form onto a different spreadsheet page, and use the order of the System Maintenance menu as a logical order to do it.
Prepare your destination:
Open the destination form. Right click the form anywhere in the grey blank space and choose ‘Datasheet view’
If there are any ‘Auto Number’ fields, drag those to the right so they will be ignored. Remember to check the source format
Copy the rows and columns from excel *excluding* field names as these won’t match
To paste any bulk data, switch the Vinsight form to the datasheet view as above.
Click into the first blank row and from the edit menu select ‘Paste Append’.