Introduction
This article explains the processes involved when managing Internal Part Numbers (IPNs) in Luminovo, including what happens if all IPNs are not uploaded, how to delete IPNs, limitations to keep in mind, and guidance for managing removed IPNs.
1. Three Ways to import your IPNs to Luminovo.
Importing IPNs to Luminovo can be done in 3 different ways: completely manually, by uploading a CSV file to our server, or via the API.
Let us discuss all three ways of uploading IPNs in detail.
1.1. Upload your IPNs manually via the Luminovo Platform
This is the easiest way to start uploading your components to Luminovo. To start you only need a CSV file containing the necessary data. The required and optional parameters for the upload you can find in the components uploader window.
Open your Luminovo platform and navigate to Parts -> Components -> Import -> Import Components
💡Note: to attach multiple MPNs to the same IPN, repeat the same IPN with different MPNs in a new line. Like this:
- "IPN", "MPN 1", "Manufacturer 1"
- "IPN", "MPN 2", "Manufacturer 2"
- "IPN", "MPN 3", "Manufacturer 3"
1.2. Automate the upload of IPNs via CSV files exchange
If you want to set up an automatic update of your IPNs, the easiest way to do it is to upload a CSV file to the Luminovo server.
Find instructions on how to do this upload in the dedicated article:
Note: the CSV upload might be the quickest, but not the most efficient. There're a few limitations, when comparing to the API upload (discussed in the next section):
No Error Log. On uploading your CSV file you will not receive any response to the content of your upload. Hence, you won't be able to properly debug your upload, if something goes wrong.
Limited Data Resolution. With CSV Files you can only upload a few parameters for every IPN. Parameters such as Customer Part Number (CPN) are not supported. Also, the differentiation between Off-The-Shelf and Custom components is not supported in the CSV uploader.
1.3. Automate the upload of IPNs through Luminovo API
Build the most advanced and powerful automations using the Luminovo API. Find more information to building with Luminovo's API in the following section:
2. General Rules to the IPN upload
There're a couple of general rules and best practices to uploading your IPNs to Luminovo.
Always upload all your IPNs. If some of IPNs present in the previous upload are missing in the new upload, they will get deleted. More on this further in this article.
Clean MPNs field. To ensure a good linking of your data within Luminovo, make sure to keep the MPN field clean. If other artefacts, such as manufacturer name or additional description are present in the MPN column, Luminovo will not automatically link your part to the digital twin of the part.
Update of your IPNs happens daily. Luminovo processes your IPN upload once/day at midnight CET. Triggering the processing of data earlier is not possible.
Overwrite your previous upload. If on one day you do 2 uploads of your IPNs, the last successful upload will get processed by Luminovo. Previous uploads are always overwritten by a new one.
Dependencies. IPNs used in existing assemblies or calculations cannot be fully deleted but will retain a
removedstatus. To completely delete those, they have to be removed from all projects.
3. How to Delete IPNs from Luminovo
When a new IPN dataset is uploaded to Luminovo, any IPNs that were part of the previous upload but are not present in the latest upload will be deleted.
There're two patterns to the component deletion:
IPNs absent from the new upload are marked as
removedif they were previously part of any calculations or projects.Completely unused IPNs are deleted entirely.
This functionality protects data integrity and prevents accidental deletions of components that might still have dependencies in the systembundled.
Note: if your upload deletes more than 300 active IPNs (IPNs used in RfQs or elsewhere in Luminovo), your upload will get blocked and will fail. If you anyway want to set more than 300 IPNs to removed, contact us under [email protected].
4. What if an IPNs Marked as Removed
IPNs marked as removed appear in the system with a tag indicating their status. These components:
Remain visible for traceability but are not included in new calculations.
Can be reinstated by including them in a future upload.
Serve as historical records to maintain data accuracy.
Best practice: Regularly review the list of removed IPNs to clean up data or restore critical components.