Improve Game Night with the Power Platform: Data Import

As you may know, I am trying to learn more about the Power Platform by creating an application to help with board game selection in my household. We have already set up the entities. Next is the data import then we will use PowerBI and create a PowerApp.

Since all of our fields are there we can import our data now. We already have the data in a consistent format (remember it was an export from BoardGameGeek) so I am going to review that file and save it as a .csv. I am going to leave extra data in the file (columns I am not importing) so that I know I can easily import more data later. I want to ensure that if I save a data map, I can use it again and do not need to review which columns I had removed the last time.

1. Navigate to Settings > Data Management > Imports
2. Click "Import Data"
3. Select your file
4. Choose the "Default (Automatic Mapping)" Option
5. Select the new entity you created
6. Now map the data to the fields created previously

   

   Data Map

   
   
7. Click Next, Click Next
8. Before submitting, enter a name for the Data Map. This will save the mapping you just did so you can use it on future files. This is also helpful when working in multiple environments. You can build and test your mapping in a development environment. Save it, export it, import the map and then import the file into production without worrying about mapping something differently.

   

   Saving the Data Map

   
   
9. Click "Submit"

Click the "Imports" link to monitor the import. This can also be found in Settings > Data Management > Imports.

Import Success

As you see I had some errors. You can get more details on these by double clicking on the import job and then navigating  to the Failures area. In my case, this was because the value for one of the fields (Minimum Play Time) was outside of the allowable values. Clearly I thought games should not take longer than a 100 minutes. I determined that these are games I didn't want to play anyways so acceptable loss. But if you did care about your errors, then you could export the list from this failure area. Fix the issue either in the file or in your system and then import again.

Reviewing Import Errors

Now your Board Game records have been created and you are ready to start working with this data! Tune in tomorrow to see my first ever Power BI Dashboard!