| Been there done that. Tips (apply common sense based on your specific company): 1. As an engineer, learn to say no. Want to import some random excel sheet into our system? Sorry no you can not. 2. Try to provide an API instead and push the problem to the customer. If they want it badly enough they can pay someone to write something that takes their stuff and imports it via your API. 3. If you have to do the file thing avoid XLSX like the plague. Stick to CSV. It's their problem to convert their XLSX or anything else to CSV. 4. CHOOSE, VALIDATE AND ENFORCE the format (or a few possible formats). Do not negotiate or collaborate with customers about "custom format" and so on. That is a never ending battle you will never win. You give 1 inch they take 10. Eventually they will give an animated gif compressed in a zip file, wrapped in a tarball and ask you to convert that to CSV and import it in. 5. If you are running a typical SaaS don't turn your product into free in-house IT consulting for the random customers. Make the capability possible within the system by exposing an API and leave the rest for them to figure out. If they care about enough they will have to pay someone to create the integrations. 95% don't care and will give up and adapt. If you have enterprise customers paying 6-7 figure sums it's a different story... |