Managing Data
This portion of the Review App documentation refers to the data functions found on your section dashboard page.
Manage contributions
Under the ‘Manage Contributions’ heading you’ll see a box with links to each of your data tables along with the number of items in each table (listings, reviews, and photos). Click a link to access individual listing data records.
Listings
The first column in your data table is a checkbox indicating whether the listing is visible on your review app. Uncheck the box to hide the listing and click the ‘Update Display Properties’ button at the bottom of the table. This does not delete data items.
The next two columns will display the listing’s unique id and the date the listing was added. The fourth column shows actions available for each listing. The first icon allows you to edit the listing including any hidden or default fields that are not accessible from the ‘front end’ of your review app. The second icon permanently deletes the listing from your review app.
The first part of the edit form shows the fields available to your users via the front end of your Review App site. Just before the first “Update” button on this form there is a menu for the listing status. Choose from “Active” (displayed on your site), “Inactive” (not displayed on your site), and “Pending” (not displayed and included in your “pending” queue).
Below this you’ll see any hidden fields; that is, fields that are not available to users via the front end data collection form. You’ll also see the date posted field and creator fields. Clicking the date posted field brings up a calendar-style selector. Click the creator field and start typing the name of the contributor; select the user from the list by clicking the user’s name.
Reviews
This page is similar to the ‘Listing’ page discussed above and allows you to manage review contributions.
Photos
This page is similar to the ‘Listing’ page discussed previously and allows you to edit photo contributions.
Editing a photo will result in the new photo overwriting the original.
Maps
Administrators may choose to move map points or change the name of the point.
Create new listing
There are two ways you can add a listing via the admin interface. The first is to add a single listing using an online form – just click the ‘Add single listing’ link on the section dashboard page.
The admin ‘add’ form is similar to the front-end form but allows you to add certain hidden fields that are not available to your users. Make sure the “Active” menu selection is chosen so your data is visible once it has been saved. Leave the “date created” and “creator” fields blank if you wish to have these filled in automatically with today’s date and your user name.
You can also load multiple data items using a spreadsheet by clicking the ‘Add multiple listings’ link on the section dashboard page. On this page you’ll first download the data template for your section and edit using a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel. The first row of your sheet will contain data field names that may appear unintelligible – ignore these. The second row will give notes and descriptions for each data field. Do not delete either of these rows.
If you have any data in your collector it will be displayed in the next set of rows. Do not edit the id field for these records as this may cause problems when you attempt to upload your file. The ‘Creator’ field contains the id of the user who submitted the data item. ‘Date Posted’ contains the unix-format date the item was added. Changes made to the ‘Rating’ and ‘Photo’ fields will not be saved when you upload your spreadsheet.
If you wish to add new data, simply add a new row below your last data item. Do not include anything in the ‘id’ field – this is how the application knows this is a new item. Data saved to the ‘Rating’ and ‘Photo’ fields will not be saved.
‘Choice’ type fields will be displayed as numbers rather than the values themselves. Use vLookup or similar function in your spreadsheet to convert these ids to more useful values. You may wish to download another sheet of your choice values by going to step 3 on the section page, then choosing to edit the applicable field, then choosing ‘Edit choices.’ Here you will see an option to ‘Download’ a spreadsheet of your choice values.
Finally, choose the applicable collector, select your CSV file, and click the ‘Load Data’ button. This will add your new and/or updated information.