There’s been some rumors kicking around that bulk loading of rates in Deltek Cobra 5.0 had some issues. Today I loaded a huge and complex rate CSV file that boasts over 10,000 rows. It took several days to develop the CSV file using good old Microsoft Excel. But once all the grunt work was finished, Deltek Cobra loaded these in via the Integration wizard’s Ancillary file features without any errors or warning – first time.
From clicking the finish button to seeing the Process Complete dialog took about 12 seconds, thereafter I was looking at over 800 rates, with over a dozen years of forward pricing all present and correct in each of the rates. I even managed to get the FTE structure setup in there too; so a successful day in all.
Compared to the Deltek Cobra 4.7 loading process, the Field Mapper is a gift for us implementers. That dialog is well designed and saves a lot of cross checking and careful noting of field order before executing the load. That field mapper alone has already saved me hours of goofing around when dealing with CSV files large and small.
For you 4.7 folks that haven’t made the leap to 5.0 yet, here’s a good example of the productivity and usability gains you can expect in Deltek Cobra 5.0. It displays a 10 row sample of the file you are integrating and you can either put the correct headings in the CSV file, or if you like, map them correctly using the drop down headers on row one to map them as you need to; really a superb solution compared it is earlier cousin.
