Importing to Workspace based picklists

[Anonymous]

Further to the suggestion in the reply to this post: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Autodesk-PLM-360/Changing-picklist-will-result-in-corrupt-data/td-p/44... , I noticed that one suggestion is to create a workspace-based picklist and to use that.  

I have done that and then found I couldn't import to it (it brings up a message in the Errors section of the import that I can't import to that picklist) and so had to create a standalone one instead.  While that was irritating, in that case, it didn't matter - the list I was using did not need ot be a workspace and wasn't too long.  However, I use a number of workspace-based picklists and can't seem to import to any of them which is a real hindrance. 

I can import to filtered picklists created from >1 field in a workspace, but this is only applicable in certain cases.

Am I correct in this  - is it a limitation of the architecture, or is this a bug ?

It would be incredibly  useful to have this restriction lifted.

Thanks,

Fiona

[dvirh]

Fiona,

You are correct that you cannot add records to a workspace that is used as a Pick List during an import to another workspace (as you CAN do for 'standalone' pick lists). However, you can import data directly to a workspace that is used as the source for a pick list in the same way that you import data to any workspace. It is also worth noting that even though you can't create new entries in the workspace that is used for the Pick List during an import to another workspace, you certainly can map to existing values in this workspace during the import. So as long as you can plan in advance what all the valid entries are, or are willing to import or create any new values in the workspace that is used as the pick list source first, this is a very powerful way to manage your picklist data. 

The reason for this limitation is the same reason why you can't import data to two different workspaces in the same import file - there is simply no easy way to map the required properties to different workspaces in one Excel table. And although the second workspace is used, in your case, as the source for the Pick List, there is nothing to say that it will only have a single property. In fact, it is very common to use a second workspace as the source for a 'Filtered Pick List' which, by definition, has multiple properties.

Hope this helps to clarify