Archibus Web Central

Importing Documents in Bulk to the Document Management System

If you need to import several documents at once, you can use the Data Transfer command, rather than the Check In button of the document management form. Data Transfer can be a quicker import method than using the Check In button.

Before bulk importing documents, ensure that the data records you want to attach these documents to already exist. For example, if you wish to bulk import multiple lease contracts, then the lease records for which you want to store the contracts must already exist in the Leases (ls) table. If needed, create the records before using Data Transfer.

  • To use data transfer to import documents:

    1. Use Smart Client or Web Central to start a new view that displays the table for which you have documents to import.

      For example, to import documents into the Action Items (activity_log) table, you would open a view for the Action Items (activity_log) table. Or, if you are importing proposal documents for work package bids associated with a project, you would open a view that has the Work Package Bids and Contracts(work_pkg_bids) table.

    2. Show the primary key for the table in the view.

      For example, for the Action Items (activity_log) table, turn on the activity_log_id.

      For another example, for the Work Package Bids and Contracts(work_pkg_bids) table, you would show the fields contributing to the multipart primary key for that table: project_id, work_pkg_id, and vn_id.

    3. Ensure that all the document fields you want to use are visible in the view.

      For example, if you are bulk importing documents for action items into the Action Items (activity_log) table, you would make the Document (doc) field visible.

      For another example, if you are bulk adding operating procedure documents to the Equipment(eq)table, you might want to show the following three document fields in the Equipment(eq) table:

    4. Use Data Transfer to transfer out the current data.

      The Data Transfer command produces a spreadsheet of the current data and also produces a folder with all of the document data named as files, such as: doc^495^1^activity_log-doc-459.docx.

      Spreadsheet and document folder are typically located in the following folders:

    1. Copy the files that you want to bulk import into the appropriate table name folder, and name them using the convention:

      DocFieldName^PrimaryKeyValue^VersionNumber^TableName-FieldName-PrimaryKeyValue.fileExtension

      For example:

      doc^63^1^activity_log-doc-63.jpg

      where doc is the document Field Name, 63 is the primary key of the record, 1 is the version number, activity_log is the Table Name, doc is the document Field Name, and 63 is the primary key for the record.

      Note: When you first import a document, the version number should be 1.

      Use carats and dashes to separate each part of the file name as shown in the above example.

    2. Edit the spreadsheet and fill in the document fields with the file names.
    3. Use Data Transfer to import the data. The new documents will import.

    To import revised documents

    The following steps describe how to use data transfer to import a revised document when a record already has a document attached.

    1. Make changes to the document as needed.
    2. Save the document, and rename it by changing the version number to be an increment of one from the version number for the existing document.

      For example, for document:

      doc^63^1^activity_log-doc-63.jpg

      you would name the revised document to be:

      doc^63^2^activity_log-doc-63.jpg

    3. Save this document to the WebCentral\projects\users\[user name]\[table name]folder. In the example given above, this would be the activity_log folder.
    4. Open the spreadsheet that you will use for importing, and change the doc field to the name of the revised document.
    5. Make an entry in the Description field to describe the version change.

      Note: You must make an entry in the Description or alternately in the Option field, or the application will not import the revised document.

    6. Save the spreadsheet.
    7. Use data transfer to import (transfer in) the spreadsheet that has the information for the revised documents.

    The revised documents are imported.

    As other options:

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