Importing Records

Over the Labor Day holiday, I spent quite a few hours working on a process for our customers to upload a spreadsheet of their items into to their RelicRecord account. This import process will allow those customers who are already tracking items in spreadsheet programs like Microsoft Excel, or local databases like Microsoft Access, to upload a list of basic information in a few short steps rather than have to manually create each item in the system.

At the beginning, we are focusing on supporting the item’s name, description, tags, date acquired and purchase price in the import process. Down the road (and depending on your feedback), other fields commonly used can be added to the process. But for now, these seemed like the basics of what someone might be tracking.

The import process will take a file with comma-separated values (.csv) and allow a customer to select which column of values in the file should be assigned to which field for an item in their RelicRecord account. This will free up customers from having to conform to a specific file structure which is too rigid. With that being said, we will still require some basic formatting.

In addition to allowing customers to map fields, we will also do some basic error checking to make sure an item has an assigned name, a valid date, and that currencies are formatted correctly. The only required field for each record is the item name. All other fields can be added/removed as the customer sees fit. In the event a row of data has formatting issues, the customer will be allowed to edit those values within RelicRecord, rather than having to re-upload a corrected file.

Once all the records have been processed, the customer can then continue to edit items and create collections!

Are there other fields we should consider at the start? We love to hear your suggestions, so shoot me an email at mitchell@relicrecord.com or hit up Will at will@relicrecord.com.

Thanks!

Mitchell