To get a detailed look at the technology behind Data Loaders and how they safely interact with QAD, visit our How Data Loaders Work page.

All of our Data Loader modules feature a video demonstration on this site so you can see how they work. We have dozens of DATA LOADER modules for every major QAD data management process. You can browse our modules based on category and choose the modules of interest to you to watch the videos.

Master Data & Inventory

Distribution & Supply Chain

Finance

Production

Each Data Loader is designed to perform a set of business functions associated with a specific menu(s) in QAD ERP. Data Loaders are used by people within your organization who perform large updates or add large transactions to the QAD ERP system. Data Loaders users must be active QAD users with sufficient security in order to download data from QAD into Data Loader spreadsheets or upload data to QAD.

32 Soft’s Web Solutions are designed to make QAD ERP data accessible tothose who would benefit from having access to QAD data but who may not necessarily have security access to the QAD ERP system. These users can view real-time QAD information and securely perform restricted transactions directly in QAD ERP, if their role allows.

32 Soft’s Data Loaders communicate with QAD via a Java Message Service (JMS) through a TCP/IP socket. Java messaging service listens at a specified port. When the JMS receives requests from the 32 Soft Data Loaders software, it establishes a connection with your QAD database for a short period of time. To learn more, click here .

Our software is completely safe to use with QAD because we use genuine QAD business logic to perform tasks. Find out more about How Data Loaders Work.

Absolutely! Data Loaders can be modified to address any custom fields, custom coding and custom validations that you have built into your QAD ERP system. We will work with you to understand and address any modifications you have made to your QAD ERP system based on the unique needs of your business to deliver a final product that works for you.

We can discuss costs for customizations with you at the appropriate time. Generally, if customization is not complex, there is not an additional charge. More complicated customizations will incur additional charges, which will be presented to you prior to implementation.

Find out more about the process we use to customize our Data Loaders.

Each of our Data Loaders has three built-in levels of security to ensure your QAD data integrity: QAD credentials, QAD groups (menu access), and QAD site/entity access. Click here to find out more about Data Loader/QAD security.

Data Loaders have a built in record lock prevention feature. If a record is locked by another user during an upload, Data Loaders will stop processing the batch of records, highlight the locked record, and notify the user that this record is locked by another user.

The first user can then decide to either delete the locked record and re-upload the file or try to upload the file later when the locked record becomes available.

The Excel interface of 32 Soft Data Loaders allows you to change labels/column headers to any language supported by Microsoft Excel. There is no lock on these cells in the template and they can be modified by the user. QAD data (for example, item description, freight terms, etc.) comes into the Data Loaders file in the same language as they are stored in QAD. Standard QAD error messages that are returned on validation are in the language used as the default in QAD. There are also some custom error messages produced by the Data Loader software. Those can be translated on customer request or added to the QAD messages list in the desired language.

It has to do with your QAD server settings, particularly -L progress server start up parameter, which controls the number of locks. The larger the –L number, the more records one can upload per batch. When a user hits the limit, the QAD server disconnects the Data Loader user and endsthe progress session. The user will receive a “time out” message. Technically, it’s a safe operation, but leaves user clueless since it does not provide much details what happens. It will be addressed in the future.

Increasing the -L value will consume a bit more server resources. In some cases, this can be a good solution, in others it will not be. Ask your data base administrator about increasing the –L value.

Keep in mind that the number of locks does not necessarily correspond to the number of records in the Data Loader spreadsheet. One spreadsheet record may correspond with many different records in the QAD database. For instance 1.10.1.1 QAD standard program updates many records in a several different tables at once for one spreadsheet record.

As general recommendation, when large updates need to be performed, we suggest you run them in hours when fewer users are logged in to QAD and fewer batch processes are running. This will allow more server resources to be allocated to Data Loader updates.

Workaround, using “chunks”:

You can work around the limitation issue by loading chunks of information at a time. For example, if you have 30K records in your spreadsheet but can only process 10K at a time, you can insert a blank row in row in row 10,000, and click upload. Only first 10K records will be uploaded. The program will stop at a blank row. Once the first 10K records are loaded, delete them from the spreadsheet and insert blank row again into row 10000 to upload the 2nd set of 10K and upload again.

Please also check this article for more information.

You can define Data Loaders as a trusted location in your Excel application. Here is how you can do this.

Alternatively, you may order code signing certificates from a 3rd party Certificate Authority company such as e-trust, Verisign or similar. We will add the certificate to your Data Loader templates.

Most Data Loaders are equipped with a “Find Error” button which is located at the top of the spreadsheet. If the “Find Error” button is missing, you can do the following:

Use Find command CTRL-F. Type ERROR in the “Find What” field. Select Options, select “look in comments”, click on “Find All”. You will see an entire list of errors and will be able quickly navigate to them.

Launch putty.exe on your Computer. Enter IP address of QAD host, jserv port# and connection type as shown below.

The port number is listed in the Data Loaders Excel template, alternatively check in mydb.ini file in $xld directory on QAD server.

Make sure the connection type is set to “RAW”.

Click “Open” button.

If Data Loaders are working correctly, you will see the screen below. If putty returns connection error, please check the firewall settings.

Please read this article.

There are a few options you can consider:

1) Use SharePoint to host Data Loaders. SharePoint gives you a benefit of content management. SharePoint not only prevents users from modifying copies of Data Loader templates, it also prevents users from replicating their own copies of templates elsewhere,  helping to prevent any undesirable proliferation of the templates.

2) Deploy on QAD .NET user interface. Here is how you can do this.

3) Deploy on company’s intranet site. You may consider publishing Data Loaders on your company intranet site.

This article explains how.

This article explains how.

As general advice, we suggest that you discontinue using the template copy, which gives VBA errors permanently or occasionally, and replace it with the original template copy you received from 32 Soft. Please store the original templates on your network as read only files. Most likely, when the template was saved with the data in it or re-saved multiple times or sent via email, its macros could have been damaged some way. So the solution is to stop using that copy of the template, replace it with the original template you received from 32 Soft.

Data Loaders have been designed to easily and quickly create/update records massively in QAD using Excel templates. QAD users can use Effective Start and Expiry Dates to activate/deactivate records massively versus deletion. Most of our customers agree that this is safer way and gives their IT folks peace of mind. The deletion feature is disabled by default. If you understand the risk and still require deletion to be enabled, contact us.

If multiple people will be using Data Loaders at your company, it is possible to enable the delete function for certain users only.

When a user opens any Data Loader and clicks on an action button that requires connection to the QAD database login, a window appears where the user is required to enter their QAD user id, password and domain. This information remains available for the duration of the Data Loader session. If a user wants to switch between domains, he/she can use the “Change Domain” button.

Users cannot modify the layout of the Data Loaders for the tabs with action buttons, but can use formulas or references on these tabs. Users can also insert additional tabs that can be designed for the user’s requirements and will not have any formatting restrictions. There will not be any connection to QAD database from the tabs added by a user.

Yes, we can add user defined fields and incorporate them in almost any 32 Soft Data Loader.

Yes, descriptive fields can be added to any download tab, as long as the information to be displayed in those fields is stored either in QAD or another Excel or text file.