Bulk upload images via Integration Framework

In the previous post, I have provided an example on how we can customize Object Structure to enable import/export binary data via MIF. In Maximo 7.6, the automation scripting framework has been greatly extended to support integration. With this update, we can enable import/export of binary data by adding a simple script without having to write and deploy custom java code. Below is an example how we can configure Maximo 7.6 to bulk upload images to Item Master application:

Step 1: Add an Object Structure integration script

• Open System Configuration > Platform Configuration > Automation Script application
• On Select Action menu, choose Create > Script for Integration
• On the Create Script for Integration pop-up, enter the following details:
• Select “Object Structure”
• Choose “MXITEM” for Object Structure
• Select “Inbound Processing”
• Language: Python
• Paste the following piece of code to the  Source Code text area:

• Click on Create. Then save the script

Step 2: Modify MXItem object structure to include IMGLIB table

• Open Integration > Object Structures application
• Open MXITEM object structure
• Under “Source Object for MXITEM”, click New Row, then enter the following details:
• Object: IMGLIB
• Parent Object: ITEM
• Relationship: IMGLIB
• Save the script

Step 3: Upload images to Item Master

I have written a sample Excel VBA tool to bulk upload images to Item Master which you can download using this GitHub repo.

You can use the application Import/Export feature or MxLoader tool to do the same. However, if you use these tools, you will need a separate tool to encode image files to Base64 encoded text string. There are many of such tools available online or as offline downloads. Or you can just use part of the code I provided in the example to do the encoding, then combine with MxLoader to achieve what you want.

Note: beware of photos taken from newer cameras, the files usually have high resolution and thus can be quite big. I’ve seen an eager team of engineers uploaded images for all assets and inventory items in a power plant, and overnight, the database grew from 1GB to 20GB. Thus make sure you resize the images before uploading. One quick and simple method in Windows is to select multiple files, then right-click, choose Send To > Mail Recipient. Windows will give you a pop-up to resize the files, choose the smallest size (640x480). Windows will resize the files, then attach it to Outlook, in Outlook, select all the files, and copy/paste them to a different folder. These files will be much smaller than original full resolution files.

Update (Jul/2020): Someone reported that when he followed this instruction, data in the Item/Organisation Details table was removed. It is because the modification of an existing out-of-the-box Object Structure in Step 2 is a bad practice. I used it for simplicity. On Production, we should always create a new object structure and include only the tables we need. To fix it, try creating a new OS as follows:

- Create a new OS: MXLITEM

- Create an Integration Script as mentioned in Step 1 above, but for the new object MXLITEM instead

- Use version 2 of the sample Excel file I uploaded to the same GitHub repo