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Create an Entity (MDS Add-in for Excel)

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Applies to: SQL Server - Windows only Azure SQL Managed Instance

In the Master Data Services Add-in for Excel, administrators can create new entities to store data. When you create an entity you should load at least a sampling of the data you want to store.

Prerequisites

To perform this procedure:

  • You must have permission to access the System Administration and Explorer functional areas.

  • You must be a model administrator. For more information, see Administrators (Master Data Services).

  • You must have an existing model to create the entity in. For more information, see Create a Model (Master Data Services).

  • Ensure that your data meets the following requirements:

    • The data should have a header row.

    • It is helpful to have Name and Code columns. Code is a unique identifier for each row.

    • You should have at least one row of data other than the header. All columns do not need values, but the data should be representative of the data that will be in the entity.

    • If you have a column that contains a unique identifier (known in MDS as Code), ensure that the values are unique. If no column contains identifiers, you can have them generated automatically when you create the entity.

    • Ensure that no cells contain formulas.

    • Ensure that no cells contain time values. Date values can be saved in MDS but time values cannot.

To create an entity and load data

  1. Open or create an Excel worksheet that contains data you want to load.

  2. Select the cells you want to load into the new entity.

  3. On the Master Data tab, in the Build Model group, click Create Entity.

  4. If you are prompted to connect to an MDS repository, connect.

  5. In the Create Entity dialog box, leave the default range or change it to apply to the data you want to load.

  6. Do not clear the My data has headers check box.

  7. From the Model list, select a model.

  8. From the Version list, select a version.

  9. In the New entity name box, type a name for the entity.

  10. From the Code list, select the column that contains unique identifiers or have codes generated automatically.

  11. Optional. From the Name list, select a column that contains names for each member.

  12. Click OK. When the entity has been created successfully, a new header row is displayed, the cells are highlighted, and the sheet name is updated to match the entity name.

Next Steps

  • To view errors that occurred, in the Publish and Validate group, click Show Status. ValidationStatus and InputStatus columns are displayed. For more information, see Validating Data (MDS Add-in for Excel).

  • Confirm that the attributes were created as the data type you expected.

See Also

Create a Domain-based Attribute (MDS Add-in for Excel)