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General roundtrip notes and tips

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This article provides some general notes and tips for getting the most out of roundtrip. Please note that this is only a supplement to the other roundtrip support resources provided.

  • START SMALL. Test your imports with a small number of items and ensure they work before scaling up.
  • Fields can be in a different order from the templates exported from your site.
    • This is a good opportunity to re-arrange the fields to best fit your workflow – for example bring your most important fields to the front, and moving less commonly used fields further down the sheet.
  • Fields cannot be renamed.
    • The field names must exactly match those from the templates exported from your site, including spelling and capitalization.
  • With the exception of a few required fields, unneeded fields can be removed from a spreadsheet entirely before import.
    • For example, if you are not using interested in location information for your digital heritage items, you can delete the Location and Location Description fields.
    • The required fields that cannot be deleted and must be properly filled in vary by content type, so digital heritage items and dictionary words, for example, have a different set of required fields. Be sure to check the field format guides for each content type that you are working with.
  • If a field is removed from a spreadsheet entirely, when the sheet is imported, that field will just be skipped.
    • If you are importing a new item, that field will be left blank after import.
    • If you are updating an existing item, if that field was already blank, it will remain blank.
    • If you are updating an existing item, is that field was already repopulated, it will remain unchanged, the contents of the field will not be deleted.
  • If a field is left empty in a spreadsheet but not removed, that field will be imported as a blank value.
    • If you are importing a new item, that field will be left blank after import.
    • If you are updating an existing item, if that field was already blank, it will remain blank.
    • If you are updating an existing item, if that field was already repopulated, the contents of that field will be deleted.
  • Consider keeping a list of your commonly-used NIDs handy so you don’t have to look them up every time.
  • GUIDs can either be produced by a tool like https://guidgenerator.com/, or they can be manually created.
    • Using a generator is quick and easy for most items, but if your import sheets require a lot of cross-referencing (eg: related items, or multi-page documents), then manually creating them may help you keep track of them.
    • If manually creating GUIDs, please be aware that each GUID *must* be unique within the site. If you re-use the same GUID by accident, the site will overwrite the content of the previous GUID with the new information being imported.
  • The default maximum size for any uploaded file is 128MB.
    • For example, this would apply to a media asset being uploaded through the web interface, or to an entire ZIP archive being imported.
    • If larger uploads are required, this can be configured in your site’s PHP settings, and is dependent on your specific hosting service.