Metadata import allows you to upload a file of metadata that relates to a number of assets that have already been uploaded. This is particularly useful when migrating from an existing system into Asset Bank as you probably able to extract existing metadata from the old system in to a file (e.g. Microsoft Excel).
If all the files you are migrating into Asset Bank have unique filenames, and you want to programmatically create the datafile, for example using legacy data, then a simple way is to put the filename in the Id column, and set filenameFormat:none in the first line of the data file. Then, structure the datafile as described in the Metadata Import User Help Page
If you intend to prepare the data by hand, or from existing spreadsheets, then another method is to create a data file using Asset Bank's export functionality, as follows:
- Ensure you have the attributes set-up in Asset Bank
Go to Admin > Attributes and ensure you have set up the attributes that you would like to populate. For example, if you want to add 'Photographer name' metadata for each of your assets, you need to ensure this attribute field exists in Asset Bank before you run the import. - Bulk upload all the assets into one category (and submit these assets to live)
Admin > Attributes > Metadata Import
Tip: if you want to hide these from users, then you can set their 'Active Status' attribute to 'Inactive', then change this to 'Active' after the metadata import is complete. - List the files you want to add metadata to run an advanced search, stipulating only the category you have uploaded to. This will return all of the assets that you want to import metadata for.
- Click on the 'Export all results...' link at the bottom of this page
- On the next page click on 'Run Export >>' (do not set anything else)
This gives you an excel spreadsheet that you can use as the basis for the import. (Note: Doing it this way round ensures the header row and column titles are correct, preventing small keying errors causing issues at the import step.) - Open the file in Excel (or LibreOffice)
You will see that it has a header row, followed by various columns that match the attributes you have set-up in your Asset Bank. - Now you can populate each relevant column with the metadata you want to import.
Things you cannot do:
- Do not delete ANY of the header row (Asset Bank needs this in order to perform the import)
- Do not delete the 'Id' column (Asset Bank needs this to match the metadata to relevant assets), or the 'EntityName' column if you are using Asset Types
Things you can do:
- You can delete columns you do not need (except those mentioned above)
- You can re-order columns or rows (except the header row, and column titles need to stay on row 2)
Tip: If you have an existing spreadsheet that you want to copy and paste column contents from, then you may have to sort both (the export from Asset Bank and your own file) by filename in order to make this process easier.
NOTE: the only attribute fields that cannot be updated as part of the re-import are 'Id' and 'Filename'. - Once ready, save the Excel file as a 'Text (Tab delimited) (*.txt)' document.
Use the following page for more information on how to save a tab-delimited file as UTF-8 in Excel - Now open this in a text editor and make sure Excel has not added in any strange characters, e.g. parenthesis around any column values. If so, complete a find and replace to remove these. Also delete any empty lines that may exist at the bottom of this file (the cursor should end on the start of the line after the last row of metadata). Now save it. It is ready to import.
- Import this file
In Asset Bank go to:
Admin > Attributes > Metadata Import > "Start new metadata import..."
Choose the file and submit it. There should be no warnings.
Once completed, browse to the assets in question and check that the fields are now populated.
Comments
0 comments
Article is closed for comments.