6 - CSV Data Importer (Transcript)

The CSV Data Importer is used for conveniently transferring any static asset information currently stored in spreadsheets into the Parago system. This task takes the legwork out of manually adding assets individually.

We can access the CSV Data Importer from the homepage. There are two actions that can be performed on this page. The first is to select the file to be imported. Clicking Browse… displays the file selection dialog, we now select the file we wish to import. Clicking OK confirms the file selection.

For most cases no further action is required. If for whatever reason the file we are importing is using non standard delimiters or textual quantifiers we must use the advanced options. Clicking Advanced Options displays the customizable options. On the left we are presented with a list of popular delimiters, these are the tab, comma, semicolon and space characters. Although it is not recommended any other character can be used, if this were the case we would select the “Other” radio button and enter the desired delimiter into the text box provided. Textual quantifiers allow characters such as a the selected delimiter or newline characters to be embedded into the asset information. These are limited to either single ('xxx') or double ("xxx") quote characters.

Now we have chosen the format for the file to be imported we can proceed to the next step. If we click Go, the file will be processed by the importer and presented to us to complete the setup of the import process.

The initial screen displayed shows all of the sections the importer found within the uploaded file. To begin with all sections are disabled. We must enable each section and assign asset type and column types.

Clicking the checkbox labelled “Import Section 1” enables the first section for importing. In the now enabled section we are shown a preview of the data. This is currently the first row within the uploaded file. As we can see this is not asset information but a column title. As this file has column names we select the “Section 1 has column headers” checkbox. This tells the importer that the current section has column names. We now have two rows, the first row in bold displays the column names for this section. The second row shows the first row of actual data. We can see preview the other rows of data. Clicking Next will show us the next row in the current section. Clicking Previous will take us back one row. It is possible to preview every row in the current section in this manner, this can be particularly useful when manually assign column types. We will cover this later on.

For the importer to correctly import the data we must assign an asset type to the current section. Clicking Unassigned to the right of the “Asset Category” label displays the asset type dialog. Firstly we need to find the correct asset type. In this instance the asset type is a projector so we select the “Presentation Equipment” category from the list. The importer now gets all asset types within this category. From the asset type list we select “Digital Projector”. Clicking Accept confirms the selection and returns us to the previous screen.

The asset type has now been selected, if a mistake has been made we simply repeat the process and select the correct asset type.

Now the importer know what type the asset is it can match the column names in the uploaded file with the column types it knows it requires for the particular asset type. Note that the column types in the list boxes already match the names included in the uploaded file. If these have been incorrectly matched or the file does not contain any column names we must assign these manually. For the purposes of this exercise we will say that the column names “Serial No” and “Asset ID” have somehow become mixed up. We scroll right to display both the “Asset ID” and the “Serial No” column at the same time. We now change the column currently named “Asset ID” to “Serial No”. Note that the column named “Serial No” has now been reset and displays “Select”. We now change this column to be “Asset ID”. Assigning column types is now complete.

The importer will also place your assets in the correct position in your organisation if the location information is available to it. In this case we have location information. We now scroll the preview all the way to the right to reveal the location column. Clicking [Unassigned] next to the “Assign Location Column” label puts the importer into “Location Column Selection Mode”. Now when we hover over the preview the column we are over is highlighted. Clicking the applicable column, in this case “Location” sets the location column. This column is now highlighted; if a mistake was made we can simply repeat the process.

This entire process is repeated for all the sections within the uploaded file. Once all the sections are complete we click Import to finalise the import process.

The success screen gives an overview of the assets imported. Here we can see that two digital projectors were imported successfully.