How to upload files using (S)FTP

Overview

While it's possible to manually upload your files to the Flare Bridge, you’ll likely want to automate that process in order to easily keep your data in Sunshine up to date. To achieve that, you can automatically save the files you generate to an FTP or SFTP folder, from where Flare can be configured to pick up and process them for you.

This article aims to describe how that process works and what steps you need to follow to automate your file uploads via an FTP or SFTP folder.

Table of Contents

1. (S)FTP Set Up
2. Automating your .csv file upload to the Pending folder
3. How does it work?

1. Set up steps

If you wish to upload your files via FTP to Flare you’ll need to do the following:

1. Create an FTP or SFTP folder: The creation of an FTP/SFTP folder is something you would be responsible for. You may want to check with your IT team for help setting this up.

2. Folders and Subfolders: In the root folder of the FTP area you have set up you should create the following folders:

   1. Flare: create this folder in the root of the FTP area

      1. Pending: create this subfolder below the Flare folder

      2. Archive: create this subfolder below the Flare folder

      3. Invalid: create this subfolder below the Flare folder

3. Whitelist IPs: If your FTP folder is behind a firewall you will need to allow access to it for the following IP addresses

   1. 104.236.96.194 - Flare support team access

   2. 52.25.190.105 - Flare Server access

4. Email Flare Support: Once you have prepared the above please email your implementation team or [e-mail] with the following information so that we can complete your configuration.

   1. FTP/SFTP details: typically these details will include:

      1. FTP location: the ftp location where your root FTP folder can be found

      2. Username: the username that will be used to connect to the folder

      3. Password: the password that will be used to connect to the folder

      4. Port: the port used to connect to the ftp folder

   2. File patterns: To ensure only the files we expect are processed we ask for a list of file names (file patterns) we should consider, i.e. if you plan on uploading OrderHeader and OrderLine files to Flare we will set patterns to only process files with those keywords in the file name and ignore others.

As part of your setup, your Flare implementation team will connect to the (S)FTP folder you provided to make sure the configuration is set up correctly.

Once your Faye Implementation team receives the information above and is able to connect to the (S)FTP folder you can expect to receive confirmation of the setup within 3-5 business days or less.

2. Automating your .csv file upload to the Pending folder

Once everything is set up, anything dropped into the “Pending” folder in your FTP area will be considered for processing by Flare. You can manually move your business data to the “Pending” folder or save them there when they are generated to automate that process.

Flare will take care of the steps after that point but you are responsible for what data files are placed in the “Pending” folder and how they get there.

 

3. How does it work?

To know what to expect, it often helps to understand exactly what happens when Flare connects to your (S)FTP folder and how your business data then finds its way into Sunshine. The flow below explains exactly what happens:

 

1. Various times a day Flare will connect to the FTP folder and check to see if there are files in the Pending folder

2. For each file found Flare will consider if the file is “valid” for processing. It will ask:

   1. Is the file a .csv?

   2. Does the file name match an expected file pattern?
      
      

3. Invalid: If any of the validation checks fail (return no) the file is moved to the invalid folder and a timestamp of when the check took place is added to the filename.

4. Archive: If the validation checks pass, the data is passed on to Flare and the file is moved to the archive folder. A timestamp of when it was processed will be added to the file name.

5. Upload to Flare: Successfully validated files are loaded to Flare and will be processed there. At this point, if you log into your Flare server you will see a record of the uploaded file in the FILES area just as you would if you’d manually uploaded the file there yourself.

What happens next depends on what you configure in the Flare server. If you already have a field mapping prepared with a matching file pattern, the rows in the file will be loaded to Sunshine. If not, you can prepare a new field mapping to define how the rows should be passed to a Sunshine object in Zendesk.

Over time the number of files in the archive folder may become quite large, so you may want to consider periodically deleting out those files especially if your FTP folder has a low storage limit.