Import Records

CSV

Import record type data stored as either a:

• CSV (comma separated values) File. Record types are broken into separate lines. Fields are separated by a comma. This is useful for small amounts of data.
• Tab Delimited File. Record types are broken into separate lines. Fields are separated by a tab. If you have lists of simple records, such as a list of people, places, items or samples, we recommend entering the data into a spreadsheet and using this option.

Only one record type can be imported at a time.

We recommend breaking very large files into manageable blocks of about two thousand lines.

Note the following:

Geographic Data

Geographic data is accepted in OpenGIS WKT format (e.g. POINT(x y). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well-known_text for more details.

Repeatable Fields.

To specify multiple values for a repeatable field, separate the values with a | (pipe) symbol within the field. For example:

1,2,"3|4",5

Normalise

In order to normalise the data (e.g. to extract a list of persons (entities) as records and then point to these person records rather than including names repetitively in the main data records), start by importing only those fields relating to the entities to be normalised. After import, the data will be redisplayed with the ID numbers for the extracted records, which can be used as a pointer field in the subsequent import of the remaining columns of data.

You needn't assign all the columns as unassigned columns will be ignored.

Duplicated records will be treated as you specified.

KML

KML (Keyhole Markup Language) is a file format used to display geographic data in an Earth browser such as Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Maps for mobile. KML uses a tag-based structure with nested elements and attributes and is based on the XML standard. All tags are case-sensitive and must be appear exactly as they are listed in the KML Reference. The Reference indicates which tags are optional. Within a given element, tags must appear in the order shown in the Reference.

Heurist will recognise the KML format and process the file, and prompt you for a record type. All records created by a single KML import will have the same record type.

Note. Contact Heurist for the KML Field Definitions for the XML file to determine how the data is mapped into Heurist.

Bibliographic

Import existing bibliographic data (bibliographic exchange formats) from EndNote or any bibliographic program which can write EndNote or Refer formats (most will).

Heurist provides the following functions and capabilities for importing bibliographic data:

• Automatic identification and disambiguation of imported bibliographic types
• Authors stored as person records allowing rich complementary data
• Series, Journals, Publishers stored as separate records to eliminate data redundancy
• Pre-defined domain profiles with collections of useful references, tags and searches

Files in Situ

This feature provides a method for managing the volume of file-based information generated during fieldwork or other research activities (i.e. images, recordings, notes, plans, GPS tracks etc.).

Large numbers of documents, images or other media can be indexed by copying them to an accessible directory on the server and running the in situ file indexer (Advanced menu). This function also reads, and creates, metadata manifests compatible with the FieldHelper metadata creator (fieldhelper.org).

Note. A bulk upload function is under development.

FieldHelper indexes files in user-defined folders and their sub-folders, and displays them along a timeline of data collection. It uses a unique drag-and-tag interface to generate metadata, including spatial metadata, without typing, and generates XML repository packages without programming. It provides a robust methodology to maintain XML manifests for each folder and sub-folder indexed.

Email

This feature allows you to import emails received from specific email addresses (set in each user's profile) via a specified email server supporting IMAP.

Heurist will connect to an email server using the login details stored in the database properties (sysIdentification table) and retrieve emails received from specific email addresses (set in each user's profile). The emails are dissected and used to create Heurist records owned by that user. The email server must support IMAP.

In order to use this feature, two additional settings are provided:

• Configure connection to IMAP mail server (per-database). This function allows a member of the Database Owners of a Heurist database to set up an email account to which users of the database can forward emails they receive or copy emails that they send, in order to have them archived in the Heurist database.
• Configure email addresses to be harvested (per-user). The default behaviour is to create a record of type Email, but in future this may be overridden with commands at the start of the email to create any specified type, which will also allow tags and other information to be added to the record.

Hyperlinks

You can import hyperlinks (URLs) from a HTML web page, to be added as new bookmarked records. The title of each record is the hyperlink itself.

You can import hyperlinks in two ways:

Import your Browser Bookmarks

You can import bookmarks saved as a HTML file from your web browser.

All browsers can save their bookmarks as an HTML file. For example:

• Firefox: Bookmarks  |  Manage Bookmarks  |  File  | Export.
• Internet Explorer: File  |  Import and Export  I  Export Favourites.
• Chrome. Bookmarks | Bookmark Manager | Organise.

In most cases, the default output file is: bookmarks.html. This file can then be imported using this import option.

Import hyperlinks embedded in web pages

You can import hyperlinks from a web page (URL). For example, to capture a page found through Google containing a set of resources of interest.

You can specify which hyperlinks to import.

Note. This feature is also available from the Bookmarklet (see Bookmarklet).