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How do I Link to an External Product Source?

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The Professional and Corporate Edition’s of QuoteWerks can link to any external, ODBC compliant data source.  This includes data sources such as Microsoft SQL, Access, Excel, FoxPro, and dBase just to name a few.  You are no longer limited to importing your product information into a QuoteWerks native product database before you can use it.

 

Step 1: Go to the Products|Setup Product Sources menu, then select the [New] button on the Product Data Source Setup window.

Step 2: From the “Select Database Type” window select the type of database from the drop down menu that you would like to link to.  In this example, we will use Microsoft Access as the Database Type. The wizard steps will differ based on the Database Type that you select. Then, click on the [Next] button to move to the next step.

Step 3: Click on the button to “Select the database that you want to link to.” Click on the [Next] button to move to the next step.

Step 4: This window allows you to select the table to be used in your data source. Please note MS SQL “Views” can also be selected.  All fields in mapped in this data source must be contained in the same table.

 

Click on the [Next] button to move to the next step.

Step 5: This window allows you to map the fields in your data source to their QuoteWerks counterpart.

 

Note: The Manufacturer Part Number field must be mapped. Also, the Manufacturer Part number must be mapped to a Text type of database field.

 

Click on the [Next] button to move to the next step.

 

Step 6: In this window enter the name of the vendor whose products you will be storing in this data source.  This vendor name will be used to refer to products when looking up products under the Product Lookup window.

 

Click on the [Next] button to move to the next step.

Step 7: On this window you can “Set Column Titles.”  Column titles are the names of the columns as they will appear in the Product Lookup window for this product source.

 

For example, in QuoteWerks the field name is called ‘Price,’ in the product data source, the field could be called ‘DefaultPrice.’ You may want to refer to this as ‘Unit Price.’ By clicking on the [Change Title] button you can rename the column title.

 

Click on the [Next] button to move to the next step.

 

Step 8: Here you can choose to display all of the products in the database when you select this product database from the Product Lookup window.

 

Click on the [Finish] to complete the link to the external Product Data Source.