Import - CSV - Public ID NOT Usable to Detect/Update/Skip Existing Entities

Bugs & Issues
1

Public ID cannot be selected in the Manage duplicates section’s Update existing Test based on and Skip duplicates based on fields, because:

  • ISSUE: those two fields only allow the selection of a mapped field (i.e. being imported and mapped to an existing field).
  • and of course Public ID cannot be imported, since it is immutable, so it never gets exposed in the above two fields, and can therefore not be used to match existing entities.

I have posted this under “Bugs & Issues” because the Public ID field is the most important/safe field when importing data for existing entities since it is the immutable, truly unique ID of an entity across time (i.e. even if its associated entity is deleted, the released ID will never be re-assigned to a another new entity).

2

It’s a valid comment, but there are some technical challenges with using Public Id as one of the import fields.

For example, there could be issues if the import rows include one where the Public Id has a value which is equal to the value of a deleted entity.
It presumably wouldn’t make sense to update the entity in the trash bin, but it wouldn’t be acceptable to create a new entity with a duplicate Id to the deleted one.

There might also be other issues as well that I haven’t yet thought of.