Importing and Exporting Network

With Remote Installer, you can easily import and export network objects any time you want. You can export one or all of the available Machines, Credentials and Collections to use the exported data as a backup, to share data with your colleagues or simply to import the objects to another instance of the program. The import feature can be used both to import Machines, Credentials, Collections and Collection Members from files created during export and those created manually. For example, you can create a CSV file manually to add Machines by specifying their data in Microsoft Office Excel. This chapter covers the process of importing and exporting network objects.

It is possible to import Machines, Credentials, Collections and Collection Members. Machines can be imported into Remote Installer from XML and CSV files. You can import Machines to the Network node or to any Collection, depending on the selection in the Network view. When running import from the All Machines view, Machines are imported into the Network node. Other network objects can be imported only from the XML format. To import Collections, you should select either the Collections node in the Network view or any Collection. The Credentials import can be launched when the Credentials view is active. The file formats are described in detail the Export/Import Formats section. You can use the files created by the program during previous exports or create new files manually.

To perform import, press the Import button from the Organize Ribbon group on the Program page. The import wizard will appear on the screen. Let us take a closer look at the import process using the Machines import as an example Pic 1.

The first page of the Import Machines Wizard is the welcome page used to introduce you to the feature the wizard is supposed to help you with. After reading the welcome information, press Next to continue with import.

On the next page of the Import Machines Wizard, you are offered to choose the file you are going to import Machines from Pic 2. The file path should be provided to the Import From field. The format of the provided file is detected automatically. The encoding of the XML file with Machines is also detected automatically. For the CSV format, a preview page is displayed where you can tune the parse options while immediately seeing the results.

In case of a CSV file, the next page is a preview page. When you change the CSV format options, the preview is refreshed so that you can see if the format options are chosen properly Pic 3.

After you have tuned the parse options, press Next to choose the Machines to import. The next page is the page for choosing Machines from those available in the file Pic 4. It is also displayed if you have chosen an XML file containing Machines. By default, all available Machines are chosen for import.

When the Machines to import have been chosen, press the Finish button to proceed with import. As soon as the import is complete, the imported Machines are added to the Network and the All Machines views. The same concept is used for importing Credentials and Collections, importing into Collections, etc.

Remote Installer allows you to export Machines, Machine Queries, Collections and Credentials. Machines can be exported to the XML or CSV file format. Other network objects can be exported to the XML file format only. To perform export, select the objects to export and press the Export button from the Organize Ribbon group on the Program page. Let us take a closer look at the network objects export using the Machines export as an example. When you choose to export some objects, the export wizard appears on the screen Pic 5.

The first page of the export wizard is the welcome page used to introduce you to the feature the wizard is supposed to help you with. After reading the welcome information, press Next to continue with export.

On the next page of the export wizard, you are offered to choose the file you are going to save the Machines data to, the file format and the format options Pic 6. The file path should be provided to the Export To field. For the XML format, you can choose the encoding to be used for saving the objects, and for the CSV file, the text delimiter and the field delimiter should also be specified along with the encoding.

After the file path and the export form have been chosen, press Finish to proceed with export. A file containing the exported objects will be created in the specified path. The file created during export can be used in the future to import the objects back to the program.

Now you are fully introduced to the network objects export and import options available in Remote Installer and can use them in the future to solve your tasks. If you are interested in creating files to import manually, you can read the Export/Import Formats section that follows this section to get detailed information on the file formats.

Export/Import Formats

This section describes the format of the files used by Remote Installer while importing and exporting network objects. The CSV export and import is only supported for Machines; other network objects can only be transferred via XML files. The CSV file format for exporting Machines in general consists of sixteen columns, namely:

Sampe CSV file with Machines

As for the XML files, each file containing exported data has the Data root node that defines the data format and the format version. The following formats are supported:

• Machines, used to represent the exported Machines, respecting the network structure;
• Queries, used to represent the exported standalone Queries and Machines;
• Collections, used to represent the exported Collections;
• Network, used to represent the mix of exported Collections, standalone Queries and standalone Machines and can be imported into the Network view or into a Collection;
• Credentials, used to represent the exported Credentials respecting the network structure.

All XML formats for exporting network objects contain the network structure. Each element in the structure is represented with the Entry node. The root node is always a network node that has its Type attribute set to 'Network'. For all the formats, except Machines and Credentials, there is also the Explorer root node available, which contains Collections, Queries and references to the nodes representing the network item. For example, if there is the same Machine in two Collections, the Machine is only stored once within the network structure, and both the Collections contain references to that Machine. Let us take a look at the available entry types for each data format.

Each node representing a network object has a set of properties used to describe the object. The table below contains a joint set of attributes and describes each attribute and its purpose in details.

Sample XML file with network objects

Now you are introduced to the formats used for storing the network objects data and can prepare files for manual import or for editing data exported earlier to be used for future imports.