Just today i helped a non-technical user of Dolibar (although he has old notions and experience of developing) to make an importation of stock of products in some of his warehouses, and i just said to him exactly the same you has said above: the importation system is quite good, but it still require some time to understand how to use it and when there is a problem with data being imported you need the help of a more technical user (like me, like a developer) to try to understand which is the error.
Sincerely, this was the first time that i tried to make an importation, so i consider that to invest about one hour to learn how and to learn what must not be done it’s not very much time. I means that the next time i will go quite fast to do the same 
But said this, i think like you: the importation abilities of Dolibarr need “a push” to get more easier.
I think that the existing importation wizard is quite powerful. Yes i think so. It’s very flexible: for example, i like the way it recognize the columns of data of the CVS you’re importing, in the simulator, and let you move them with the mouse. I’ve liked a lot this feature.
So, i think that this wizard is very very good. Maybe it needs only some improvements. Maybe more “tooltip” or “guiding texts/labels” to newbie users?
I’ve a new idea: implement locally -inside the menus of each section- “specific importation-tools” much more simple to use. Probably less powerful, but more fast and easy. Hehehe, remeber: best is not always better!
Example: in the card of a warehouse include a “Fast import” new tab, with a very very simple importation wizard:
- 1. you populate a TEXTAREA box with as many lines as products IDs and stocks to be added to that warehouse, in comma separated format
- 2. you click on a PREVIEW IMPORT DATA
- 3. the page is re-loaded with the product’s names and their old/new stock, and it mark errors, if that exist
- 4. you modify the TEXTAREA or do click over SUBMIT DATA to DB to finish importation
Simple, easy and fast…
I think that it could be interesting to provide each important “section/table” of the database with some fast-importation tools like this.
But you know: it’s easy to say it, but you should begin to develop it So i will try to implement a tool like this in any of the sections/modules.
Anyway, what do you think? Maybe i’m talking about re-inventing the wheel! Please, alert me if i’m doing it!
Cheers!
