Managing large database object files (LOBs), such as employee documents, images, and resumes, can be resource-intensive and impact system performance. Fortunately, the Infor Landmark Administration Console offers tools to streamline the loading and management of these files, significantly reducing manual effort.
Interested in seeing how? Good news! RPI Consultants’ Principal Consultants, Sue Pokorny and Jeremy Stoltzfus will walk through best practices for handling large files in Infor Landmark.
From job descriptions and personnel records to headshots, historical documents, and more, Infor’s Administration Console makes upload files a breeze. Session attendees will learn:
- How to use the Landmark Administration Console for bulk file loading
- Best practices for managing job descriptions, personnel records, and employee headshots
- Strategies for handling historical documents like appraisals, corrective actions, and occupational health records
Don’t let big files run wild—get them under control in Infor Landmark! Watch now to get caught up.
Transcript
Sue Pokorny
Good afternoon. Today we’re going to talk about wrangling job descriptions, headshots, and HR files in Infor HR Talent.
My name is Sue Pokorny. I’m a principal consultant here at RPI and I implement HCM. I’ve been doing implementations for about four years now and have been working in the HR industry for over 25.
Jeremy Stoltzfus
Hi, my name is Jeremy Stoltzfus. I’m a principal tech consultant with RPI. I’ve been with RPI for a little over eight years and have been in the Infor Lawson space on the technical side for over 20 years.
Sue Pokorny
On today’s agenda, we’re going to talk a little bit about LOBs — large objects. We’ll cover what access you need to upload large objects, walk through a demonstration using slides, and then discuss other uses for this process.
Jeremy Stoltzfus
Let’s start by talking about what LOBs are. LOB stands for large database object. Throughout the application, there are places where documents and images can be attached, and those are stored as binary large objects. The Landmark Administration Console provides a means to bulk load them, as opposed to loading each one individually and transactionally in the application. It’s a back-end process that we’ll walk through today.
As you begin to look into trying this out on your own, here is the access you’ll need: access to the Administration Console — in the GHR application, that means the AdminST role — and access to the SFTP site connected to your CloudSuite tenant, which may differ depending on the tenant. You’ll also need access to all of the files you plan to upload into the target business class.
Sue Pokorny
Today we’re going to walk through uploading a position description onto your positions. To start the process, you’ll need to create a CSV template that identifies the files you want to upload, the file names you want assigned, and which position each file should be attached to. To begin, navigate to the Administration Console, select Database, go to the Maintenance card, and select Update Large Objects.
In the Determine Action section, since we’re starting this process, we’ll select Create Input File. Then select the business class you want to upload documents to — in this case, Position. In the Field String, you’ll define the columns in your file. At a minimum, you need HR Organization, Position, and Position Description.file. If you’d like to more easily identify which documents are being attached to which position, you can also add Position Short Description or the Position Description columns. Separate each field with a comma. So your field string would be: HR Organization, Position, Position Description.file — and optionally, a comma followed by Position Short Description.
Jeremy Stoltzfus
It’s important to note why those minimum fields are required. HR Organization and Position are the primary key of the Position business class, so they are critical. The .file field is where the large object gets attached. Whatever business class you’re working with, make sure you know its primary key fields.
Sue mentioned Short Description, which is the common position number you may be familiar with — or if you migrated from another system, it may correspond to that legacy identifier. The Position number itself is the sequential number generated when positions are created within GHR.
Sue Pokorny
For the Filter String: if you only want to include active positions, enter active equals true. When the system pulls positions into your CSV template, it will only include those matching that filter. Once you’ve filled everything out, click Submit and it will generate your CSV template.
To open the CSV template, navigate to your SFTP site and open the position.csv file. Jeremy, do you want to talk about where to find that?
Jeremy Stoltzfus
Sure. If you entered a subfolder in the parameter screen, you’ll need to navigate from the root directory of your admin console down to whatever subfolder you specified.
Sue Pokorny
When you open the position.csv file, it will open as a spreadsheet. It will look similar to the example shown, except columns E and F will be blank — those are the columns you’ll fill in. Column E is used for a more user-friendly display name once the document is loaded into the system. Column F must contain the actual file name. It must include %rootpath% for the upload to work, and the file name must exactly match the name of the file you’ve transferred to your SFTP site — title included.
Jeremy Stoltzfus
To clarify: the screenshot above the spreadsheet shows the actual files I uploaded to my SFTP site. They’re sitting there waiting to be processed along with the position.csv file. After you’ve finished editing the CSV, you’ll upload it back to the SFTP site — to whatever subdirectory you’re using — along with all of the actual document files.
Column F indicates the physical file name — Finance Analyst 1, 2, 3, and 4.docx in this example — and those names must match exactly with the files on the SFTP site. If your file names align well with your descriptions, you can use Excel formulas to build the file name column, as long as %rootpath% is included. Once the file names match exactly, everything lines up and the process runs cleanly.
Sue Pokorny
Correct. And a quick tip: you can use the CONCATENATE formula in Excel to add the %rootpath% prefix.
Moving on to step four — actually uploading the large objects. Go back to the same form used to create the CSV: Administration Console > Database > Maintenance > Update Large Objects. Specify your subdirectory, and this time set the action to Update LOBs instead of Create Input File. Select the Position business class again, enter the file name for your input file — position.csv — and click Submit. This will upload all of the large objects attached in that spreadsheet to their corresponding positions. It may take a little while to run, so you can monitor your async queues for completion. Once the job finishes, navigate out to your positions to verify the attachments.
Jeremy, do you want to mention the Create User Report option?
Jeremy Stoltzfus
Yes — the Create User Report parameter is on by default. It will generate an output report in your print files showing the results of the run, including which uploads succeeded and which failed.
Sue Pokorny
So you’d be able to easily see which ones failed and which ones were uploaded successfully.
Jeremy Stoltzfus
Exactly. If there was a file name mismatch or a spelling error between the physical file name and what was in the CSV, you would see that reflected in the user report.
Sue Pokorny
To review where a document was attached, navigate to HR Administration > Jobs and Positions, identify the position — in this example, position 82 — and from the Detail tab, you’ll see the description is now attached along with the date it was uploaded. Click the blue hyperlink to open and review the document.
You can use this procedure to upload large objects such as images, PDFs, Word documents, and Excel files. There are also a variety of real-world use cases beyond position descriptions. Job descriptions and position descriptions tend to be the most common, but you could also use this for employee resumes — for example, if you converted active employees during a system migration and want to upload their resumes in bulk. The same goes for headshots: if employee photos are stored in your active directory and used on personnel badges or PDFs, you can transfer them to the SFTP site and upload them in mass. Personnel files are another use case — historical documents, performance appraisals, corrective action documentation, drug test results, occupational health files — all of that can be uploaded in bulk and attached to each employee’s profile.
Jeremy Stoltzfus
Essentially, anywhere in the application where you’d manually attach a document — typically indicated by a folder icon next to a field — you can use a mass upload instead. Use the Ctrl+Shift+Left Mouse Click shortcut to identify the business class, and that’s really all you need to get started. From there it’s the same process we walked through: create the input file, populate the CSV, and run the upload.
It’s worth noting that you don’t necessarily have to run the job to generate the input file — you could pull the header information from the Spreadsheet Designer or create it manually if you already have the data. The generate step is just a helpful way to get the primary key fields pre-populated so you have a solid starting point.
Sue Pokorny
Some key reminders: make sure the files you want to upload are transferred to your SFTP site so the job can retrieve them, and that the file names in your CSV template exactly match the file names in your directory.
Jeremy Stoltzfus
And that’s it for our discussion today. Thank you very much for your time.
Sue Pokorny
Thank you. Have a great day.
