- Equipment Importer

Importing Equipment from CSV Lists

Introduction

The Import Equipment tab allows you to download and populate a CSV template which can then be uploaded to iPassport, creating equipment records en masse.

The template includes the main fields used by equipment records. The process is simple but particular care must be taken to enter the information accurately so iPassport can link to any lookup fields.

The Import Equipment tab is found by navigating to Laboratory Records > Equipment. This is only visible to users with the permission, “Equipment:Create Equipment” (included in the system roles, “Equipment Editor”, “Global Editor (excluding admin)” and “Global Editor (excluding admin and personnel records)” ). The user performing the operation will need this permission in all OUs listed in the CSV file being imported.

Step 1 - Downloading the Template File

Simply click the underlined word, “here” in the message, “Click here to download a blank equipment import template in a format readable by iPassport.”
The template should open in any spreadsheet application.

Ensure You are Using Text Formatting

Most customers use Microsoft Excel™ to process spreadsheets but the following advice can be applied in other similar applications.

On opening the CSV file in Excel the first step is to format all cells as Text cells. This is to avoid any confusion over date formatting (where Excel may try to be clever and switch the formatting to a pattern which iPassport cannot recognise).

To do this, first click the square in the top right corner of the sheet to select all cells. Then right click on any cell and choose Format Cells: Excel Cell Formatting

Select Text and click OK. This should avoid much pain when you reach the point of uploading your data into iPassport.

Date Fields

iPassport is used globally and different customers have different ways of formatting dates. Please ensure that all dates are formatted YYYY-MM-DD in the CSV upload. These will be converted to a standard iPassport date format once uploaded.

Lookup Fields

The following fields reference records elsewhere in iPassport. It is important that the spelling of these exactly matches the record name or iPassport will not be able to match them up. The lookup is case sensitive.

  • OU - Organisational Units (OUs) have a short name and a long name and both are accepted in the spreadsheet on condition that the spelling is exactly as it appears in the record.
  • Equipment Type
  • User Responsible
  • Equipment Manufacturer - References a Company record
  • Service Contract Provider - References a Company record
  • Storage Location(s) - References a Location record. Only locations which are tagged with the OU of the equipment record will be available for this piece of equipment. More information on this is available here. Use a semicolon to set multiple storage locations
  • Usage Location(s) - See above notes on Storage Locations
  • Received By User - Multiple users can be set. Separate these using semicolons
  • Install Supervised By - Multiple users can be set. Separate these using semicolons
  • Installed By Company - References a Company record

Capital Equipment? (Yes / No) is a required field and must be set to either Yes or No.

Step 2 - Uploading the File

Once the spreadsheet is ready for importing, it must be saved/exported as a CSV file. The recommended CSV format is Unicode (UTF-8).

NOTE: Most customers use Microsoft Excel™ to process spreadsheets so here are some pointers to follow:

  • Excel will open CSV files automatically but it will try to convert them to its own format (.xlsx).
  • Each time a spreadsheet is saved for use in iPassport, it must be converted to CSV format.
  • To export a spreadsheet to CSV, use the Save As function and choose the File Format, CSV UTF-8 (Comma Delimited) (*.csv), before clicking Save.
  • NOTE: For older versions of Office (before 2016), you may not have the above option, instead choose 'CSV Comma Delimited (*.csv)' for the 'Save as type' and select 'UTF-8' as the Encoding type.

Your saved CSV file can then be uploaded to iPassport in the dotted area under Step 2.

Click inside the area to open the browser’s search and select window or drag the CSV file into it. The system will quickly reject any files not of the correct format.

Step 3 - Validating the imported CSV

iPassport will immediately perform a validation of the information on the sheet and it will report any problems it finds. All the errors must be fixed before it’s possible to move to the next step. With each iteration, remember to save the file in CSV format so it can be re-uploaded.

Step 4 - Run the Import

When there are no errors, click the Import Equipment button.

Once complete a summary of the import will be displayed.

This is the last article in this user guide.
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