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Primary and Secondary Lookup Combinations

The fields that you select as the primary and secondary lookup in your column mapping are used to search for data in the product database.

Simple mapping

In simple mapping, you specify only the primary lookup. For example, you are importing or deleting a set of company records from a text file into the product database. You specify the Company Name as the primary lookup. If a company with a particular name does not exist in the database when you are importing data, a record is created for the company. The following table shows an example of the lookup for a simple mapping.

Reference field mapping

In reference field mapping, you specify primary and secondary lookup values. To search for a unique object, specify more than one primary lookup. For example, to search for a company, you can specify Company Name, Parent Company, and Company Type as primary lookup values. In this example, the Data Importer searches for a company with the specified name, the specified parent company, and of the specified company type. If the object does not exist and you are importing data, the record is created (depending on the insert or update option you selected in Advanced Settings). The following table shows an example of the lookup for reference field mapping.

This mapping has both the Primary Lookup and the Secondary Lookup check boxes selected for Parent Company and Company Type. The Data Importer uses the Company Name to look up the parent company and uses the Parent Company to look up the company name.

Secondary object mapping

If a mapping rule maps to a secondary object property, the primary lookup values establish a relationship between a secondary object and the reference fields. The following table shows examples of the lookup for a secondary object mapping.

In the first mapping rule, Legal Document is the primary object, and Legal Party is the secondary object. Comment is a property of Legal Party.

In the third mapping rule, Legal Document is the primary object, and Legal Party is the secondary object. In addition, Legal Party has a reference field in the Company table. The Secondary Lookup check box indicates that the Company Name is used to look up the Company object. The Primary Lookup check box indicates that the Company object is used to look up the Legal Party object.