Using Alteryx to Change Metadata in BlueYonder Space Planning .jda Files - DBKey

[Ryan_Callahan]

Hey Everyone,

I was recently told that there is a way to update metadata fields within a Space Planning flat file (extension *.jda) using Alteryx to do mass changes within the files.  This may be a question for the BlueYonder support area, but I'm having difficulty figuring out how to link the text information within the Space Planning files to Alteryx to build the workflow to code in DBKeys and other locked fields in the space planning files.

Is this something anyone in the community has done before?

Thanks for everyone's help!

[Maskell_Rascal]

Hi @Ryan_Callahan 

So it is possible to extract this information from the PSA files with Alteryx. In fact, you can even modify them and resave the projects/planograms utilizing Alteryx. The concern comes from how these DBKeys are used within CKB. I would not recommend editing or modifying these fields. The JDA help index even specifically calls this out. 

[Ryan_Callahan]

Thank you for the super fast response.  While I appreciate the risks of tinkering with metadata in any file, Space Planning not the least, I have a conundrum I'm not sure to overcome, and this was suggested as a route to research.  I have a partner that requires us to maintain the DBKey information in the metadata of the space planning files, and when we import/export the space planning files out of our CKB system it overrides those fields.

I need a way to return the DBKeys in the metadata back to what we received attached to them.  This is something we need to do outside of our CKB system and while we've asked our developer partner, the solutions that they have come back with are incredibly expensive.  I'm trying to figure out a more cost-effective way to do this.

What I would need to be able to do is extract the DBkey fields out of the Space Planning files into a database that I could link to the same mod files in our CKB system that has its own DBKeys.  This may be more of a Space Planning question than an Alteryx one, but I figured I'd start here because BlueYonder is very good at hiding simple functions behind paywalls.

[Maskell_Rascal]

Hey @Ryan_Callahan 

So that makes more sense now, and thanks for explaining the need state of this capability. I'm always a little hesitant helping people break into protected fields. 😁

In any event, what you're looking to accomplish is highly doable with Alteryx. Here is a screen shot of a couple POGs and the DBKeys prior to running my workflow. 

And here is a screenshot of them after

For the sake of this exercise, I just numbered them sequentially. 

The workflow itself if pretty straightforward, just make sure that you input your .psa files as .csv with the following options:

You can load one project file at a time, or you can load them all in using the wildcard method. The workflow is built to replace all the DBKeys (1-10), and the Join is matching on Planogram Desc 2, but can be altered to suite your needs. 

One final note, both the Input and Output tools are set to dynamically look/save the files where the workflow is saved. You can change these to your desired directories. I would recommend having one folder with the original PSA files for inputting, and a separate folder for the output. This will ensure that you can troubleshoot anything that accidentally gets overwritten. Since we aren't using Blue Yonder's official automation software, there is a lot that can break if you mess something up. 

Hope this helps, and let me know if you have any questions on the workflow. 

If this solves the problem please mark answer as correct, if not let me know!

Cheers!

Phil (the JDA Jedi)