Overview
The Tools importer bulk-creates or revises tools. In ION, a tool is a part with the tool part type, so this importer follows the same revision flow as the Parts importer but exposes a narrower, tool-relevant column set.
Two things are set automatically on every row:
- Part type is always
tool.
- Tracking type is always
serial — tools are serial-tracked. Including a tracking_type column in the CSV is rejected.
Columns
| Column | Required | Description |
|---|
part_number | Yes | The tool’s part number. |
revision | No | The revision. Omit to let ION assign the next revision automatically (or the scheme’s initial value if the tool is new). |
revision_scheme | No | Name of the revision scheme to use when creating a brand-new tool. Defaults to the org’s default scheme. |
description | No | Free-text description. |
export_controlled | No | Whether the tool is export controlled. Boolean field (see accepted values). |
maintenance_interval | No | Maintenance interval as a human-readable duration, e.g. 30d, 1d 2h 20m, or a plain integer (seconds). Units: w, d, h, m, s — each may appear at most once. |
maintenance_interval_seconds | No | Maintenance interval as a raw number of seconds. Must be non-negative. |
subtypes | No | Semicolon-delimited list of tool subtype names, e.g. Torque Wrench;Calibrated. |
maintenance_interval and maintenance_interval_seconds map to the same underlying field — provide one or the other, not both.
Revisions
Revision behavior mirrors the Parts importer: rows with an explicit revision create or update that exact (part_number, revision), while rows that omit revision either initialize a new tool at the scheme’s first value or auto-revise an existing tool from its latest revision.
Subtypes
The subtypes column attaches one or more subtypes to the tool. Subtype names are matched case-insensitively; names that don’t exist yet are created automatically, so you can bootstrap your subtype list from the same CSV. Associations that already exist are skipped, keeping re-imports idempotent.
Custom attributes
Any column not in the standard list above is treated as a custom attribute on the tool. Custom attribute columns must match a configured attribute key for your organization; unknown columns cause a validation error.
Related pages