AssetTrack Upload Forms

High level steps for importing data for an upload form

1. The user populates the upload file
2. The user uploads the file
3. AssetTrack validates the file to be well-formed
4. AssetTrack begins asynchronously importing the data, writing entries about the process to the AssetTrack log 
5. Verify upload results in system log
6. After a successful upload, the user can view the data in the queue.

Importing data for an upload form: step by step

1. On the AssetTrack server, click on Forms in the main navigation to see a list of upload forms for which you have permission.

2. Click on the form name link to see a specific upload form.

3. Examine the Template details to see information about the data fields and constraints for the specific upload form, including:

• The header expected for each individual data point the upload form is expecting
• The type of data AssetTrack expects for each field
• Any field length constraints AssetTrack checks when processing the data

4. AssetTrack will generate a file template that corresponds to the field information outlined in the Template details section of the upload form.  Click on the Download Template link to download this template.

Informed by the /wiki/spaces/IPD2/pages/2032401, data files for any specific form have the following attributes:

• • Fixed number of fields the upload form expects
  • Fixed header names
  • AssetTrack will only import values from the expected columns (i.e. header names)

5. Populate the data file (if manually editing, Excel or Google docs can be helpful)

If one of your fields is a DateTime data type, see the section about The DateTime data type below.

6. Click the Browse... button to select the now-populated upload file, and click the Upload file button to begin the Import process

On initial upload, AssetTrack only validates that the file matches the expected format, matching headers and number of columns in each row.  If not, the import process will be halted, and the user will be given specific information about the errors.

7. If the data file is accepted for import processing, the user is returned to the upload form screen, and a message lets the user know that an upload batch has been created for processing the data file.

8. Finally, click the Home link in the main navigation to see the most recent log entries to see how your batch is progressing.  Any errors will be presented here with as much information as possible for helping identify the specific problem.

The DateTime data type

DateTime data values require some special consideration by the person or system creating the upload file.

Recommended formats

AssetTrack represents DateTime values internally as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) representations.  When AssetTrack processes a file for an upload form, it attempts to parse all DateTime field values into an internal UTC representation.  To ensure that this value gets represented accurately, AssetTrack recommends representing your DateTime values as UTC values in one of the following formats:

Not specific, but usable formats

To ensure your intended value is accurately represented in AssetTrack, we encourage you to use one of the recommended formats above which explicitly express UTC time. AssetTrack can, however, handle ambiguously specified DateTime values. In all such cases, AssetTrack will assume that you're trying to specify a UTC time, not a local time. Keep in mind that the intended value may end up getting altered due to its lack of specificity.

Additional collection context field support

These fields can be added to any upload form to provide context around the data collected. The headers must be added to the downloaded template in order to receive this information.