Excel Add-In for Acumatica

Build 24.0.9060

Limitations

Custom Fields

By default, the table and view schemas describe the column behavior of system fields as well as custom fields. You can set the IncludeCustomFields property to false if you want to work only with system fields. On a SELECT * FROM EntityName query, the custom fields will not be returned even though IncludeCustomFields is set to true. The Custom fields will be returned only when they are specified on projections. For example: 

SELECT Custom_FieldA, Custom_FieldB, Custom_FieldC FROM EntityName

The requirement to explicitly select the custom fields is due to a limitation with the Acumatica API. It will not return results when too much overall data is selected per record. It is not possible to dynamically calculate at what point Acumatica will cut off results. You should only select the columns you need and not everything to keep things working smoothly.

In case a group of custom fields are important to your use case and the Acumatica API cannot return them in a single response, it is recommended to setup an extended endpoint and include the custom fields in it. After this change, you should be able to retrieve them as non-custom fields from the extended endpoint.

An alternative to extending an existing endpoint is to split the main query into two or more subqueries and distribute the selected custom fields between them. Lastly, you can join the subqueries on the primary key column as in the example below. 

SELECT Customer_1.CustomerID, Customer_1.Custom_Timezone, Customer_1.Custom_ProductGroup, Customer_2.Custom_ContactCategory, Customer_2.Custom_DiscountGroup 
FROM Customer Customer_1 JOIN Customer Customer_2 
ON Customer_1.CustomerID = Customer_2.CustomerID

Linked and Detail Entities

The Linked and Detail entities to main entity are exposed in the main entity table as aggregate columns starting with the 'Linked' prefix. They are also exposed as separate views using the naming format 'MainEntityName_LinkedEntityName'. For example, the Customer table exposes the linked entity 'Contacts' as the aggregate field 'LinkedContacts'. The linked entity Contacts is also exposed as the separate view Customer_Contacts.

Due to Acumatica REST API limitations, the Linked and Detail entities cannot be retrieved when requesting multiple main entity records. For this reason, when querying the main entity, without specifying the primary key in the WHERE clause conditions, the linked aggregate fields are returned as null. For example, in order to retrieve the aggregate values of the linked entity Contacts in the Customer table, you can execute one of the queries below. 

SELECT CustomerID, LinkedContacts FROM Customer WHERE customerId = '100009'

You can also make use of the IN operator and subqueries as below, in order to retrieve the Linked and Detail entities for multiple parent records. 

SELECT CustomerID, LinkedContacts FROM Customer WHERE CustomerId IN (SELECT CustomerId FROM Customer)

Additionally, to query the exposed Linked and Detail entities, specifying the parent entity primary key in the WHERE clause conditions, is required. For example: 

SELECT * from Customer_Contacts where ParentCustomerID = '100009'

Excluded Columns

Acumatica has introduced an optimization in version 3 of the Contract Based API. When multiple records are retrieved from the Acumatica ERP through an endpoint, the system tries to optimize the retrieval of the records and obtain all needed records in one request to the database. If the optimization fails, the system returns an error, specifying the entities or fields that caused the failure of the optimized request. To prevent the error from occurring, we need to do one of the following:

  • Get all the records one by one by specifying the key fields.
  • Get only the fields that don't break the optimization.

Create the schema by calling the CreateSchema if you have not already done so.

Add the additional parameters in the .rsd schema files below.

  • key="true"
  • other:exclude="true"

These two parameters are needed so the new entities don't return an error in SELECT * FROM Table queries. The example below is a rsd snippet that shows how these parameters are used.

In the example Contact.rsd, Duplicate and AddressValidated are fields that break the Acumatica optimization so they have the additional parameter other:exclude="true". When a SELECT * FROM Contact query is done, the driver will get all fields except those with the other:exclude="true" parameter. However, the omitted fields will still appear on your result set as null. The data provider will request the excluded fields from the endpoint only if they are explicitly stated in the SELECT clause or if the primary key column/s are specified.

In the example Contact.rsd, ContactID is the primary key so the additional parameter key="true" is added. When a SELECT * FROM Contact WHERE ContactID='contactid' is done, the driver will get all fields from the API including the Duplicate and AddressValidated. 

<rsb:script xmlns:rsb="http://www.rssbus.com/ns/rsbscript/2">
  <rsb:info title="Contact" description="Contact is an auto-generated table." other:tablehref="https://try.acumatica.com/ISV/entity/Default/17.200.001/Contact" other:tablekind="EntitySet"/>
    <attr name="LanguageOrLocale" xs:type="string" columnsize="2000" readonly="false" description="null" other:entityname="Contact" other:schemanamespace="Contact" other:internalcolumnname="LanguageOrLocale"/>
    <attr name="DuplicateFound" xs:type="bool" readonly="false" description="null" other:internalcolumnname="DuplicateFound"/>
    <attr name="JobTitle" xs:type="string" columnsize="2000" readonly="false" description="null" other:internalcolumnname="JobTitle"/>
    <attr name="ContactID" xs:type="int" key="true" readonly="false" description="null" other:queue="0" other:internalkey="ContactID" other:internalcolumnname="ContactID"/>
    .......
    <attr name="Duplicate" xs:type="string" columnsize="2000" readonly="false" description="null" other:exclude="true" other:internalcolumnname="Duplicate"/>
    .......
    <attr name="AddressValidated" xs:type="bool" readonly="false" description="null" other:exclude="true" other:internalcolumnname="AddressValidated"/>
    .......
      <rsb:set attr="other:tablekind" value="EntitySet" />
  <rsb:set attr="tablename" value="Contact" />
  <rsb:set attr="description" value="Contact is an auto-generated table." />
  <rsb:set attr="entity" value="Contact" />
  <rsb:set attr="other:tablehref" value="https://try.acumatica.com/ISV/entity/Default/17.200.001/Contact" />
  <rsb:set attr="supportgetdeleted" value="true" />

  <rsb:script method="GET">
    <rsb:call op="acumaticaadoExecuteSearch">
      <rsb:push/>
    </rsb:call>
  </rsb:script>

  <rsb:script method="POST">
    <rsb:call op="acumaticaadoExecuteInsert">
      <rsb:push/>
    </rsb:call>
  </rsb:script>

  <rsb:script method="MERGE">
    <rsb:call op="acumaticaadoExecuteUpdate">
      <rsb:push/>
    </rsb:call>
  </rsb:script>

  <rsb:script method="DELETE">
    <rsb:call op="acumaticaadoExecuteDelete">
      <rsb:push/>
    </rsb:call>
  </rsb:script>
</rsb:script>

Creating User Defined Views

A simple and effective way to automate the process of getting all records one by one by specifying the key fields are the User Defined Views. User Defined Views are predefined queries stored in a local JSON file, which can be queried from the driver just as the existing views.

As stated in the above section, the excluded fields will be retrieved if the primary key is specified. You can use the driver's enhanced SQL support to automatically do this for each record by appending an IN subquery to your main query. From the subquery, you should be selecting only the primary key column as in the example below. 

SELECT * FROM Contact WHERE ContactId IN (SELECT ContactId FROM Contact)

You can then add this query under the "query" field of a local created JSON file (ex. C:\Users\user\Desktop\CustomViews.json). 

{
    "AllContacts": {
        "query": "SELECT * FROM Contact WHERE ContactId IN (SELECT ContactId FROM Contact)"
    },
    "AllCustomers": {
        "query": "SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE CustomerId IN (SELECT CustomerId FROM Customer)"
    }
}

Lastly, you can directly query the defined views (AllContacts and AllCustomers) after stating the Custom Views file location in the UserDefinedViews property under the Other connection parameter.

Other='UserDefinedViews=C:\Users\User\Desktop\CustomViews.json;'

You can also execute a query to the sys_tables view to verify if the custom views are added. You should be able to find them under the UserViews schema. 

SELECT * FROM sys_tables where TableType='view'

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Build 24.0.9060