Initializing default authorities and term lists

In order to make a newly-created tenant fully functional, you must initialize data for that tenant. The process of initializing data involves reading configuration files in CollectionSpace's Application layer and, from that configuration, creating:

A set of authorities, which will hold authority terms for persons, organizations, storage locations, and the like. Initializing this data is necessary to be able to save authority term records (Person, Storage Location, Concept, etc.), as well as to enable "autocomplete" fields, in which you can type into a field and be presented with suggestions for matching terms.
A set of vocabularies, along with lists of terms in each of these vocabularies. Initializing this data is necessary to populate the options that appear in certain drop down menus.

The process of initializing authorities and vocabularies/term lists involves two steps:
1. Logging into the tenant in which you wish to initialize data.
2. Visiting a specific URL to begin the initialization process. (You'll then see on-screen messages describing its progress.)

For instance, when you install a brand-new CollectionSpace system, you'll need to initialize data for the demonstration core tenant. To do so:

Make sure you are logged into the core tenant, then enter this URL in a browser:
http://<ip-address>:8180/collectionspace/tenant/core/authorities/initialise

For Linux, Mac OS X, and other Unix-like systems, there is also a shell script available to automate the process of initializing default authorities and term lists for one or more tenants. You can optionally run that script as an alternative to the manual process described above.

Populating with sample records

You can optionally choose to populate a CollectionSpace tenant with a set of sample records. These include over 2,000 authority term records for persons and organizations.

Typically you would only populate a demonstration or "play" tenant with sample records, to avoid intermingling sample records with "real" records. To populate the demonstration core tenant with sample records:

Make sure you are logged into the core tenant, then enter this URL in a browser:
http://<ip-address>:8180/collectionspace/tenant/core/reset

This process of adding sample data is time consuming - it can take 20 minutes or more. During that time, you will see a succession of progress messages in your browser window.

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