User Manual: CSV Importer: Import Templates
Templates for helping organize your data for import can be obtained in two ways: via the CollectionSpace GitHub repository (recommended) or by using the CollectionSpace search results export (ad hoc reporting) feature.
They key element of the templates is the column headers. The column headers in your spreadsheet need to match the field names found in the CollectionSpace database. These are not the same field names that you see in the user interface; for example, Other number > Value in the UI is numberValue in the database.
We recommend you use templates downloaded from the GitHub repository. These templates have every field in a given procedure or authority, along with information about the correct type of data to put in each field. Most importantly, they indicate the allowed values for fields controlled by a static term list/optionlist, which may be different from how you see those terms displayed in the user interface. Finally, for fields that can be populated from multiple authorities, you will see all the possible fields in the order that they will be processed (see this issue for why that matters).
Templates generated via search results export are more “quick and dirty,” and will have only the column headers that you select when Exporting. For fields that can be populated from multiple authorities, depending on the data in the selected records, you may not get all possible columns in your template. The columns may not appear in the order they will be processed.
You do not need to know how to code or use advanced features of Github to retrieve templates from our repository. Step-by-step point-and-click instructions are given below.