Bulk import changes

If this is a bulk import report, send the spreadsheet to services@wildme.org with the email subject line matching your bug report

In which Wildbook did the issue occur? ACW

What operating system were you using? (eg. MacOS 10.15.3)
Windows 11

What web browser were you using? (eg. Chrome 79)
Chrome

What is your role on the site? (admin, researcher, etc)
OrgAdmin

What happened?

  1. When doing a bulk import, the system does not recognize the zeros (0) in the hour column. For sightings occurring at midnight (e.g. 00:45), the system gives an error as it cannot see the 00. See attached images.
  2. Once imported, the bulk import does not stay in the same order as in the actual spreadsheet. I always group my sightings per location (e.g. first all the sightings from reserve A, then all from reserve B, then reserve C etc) but once imported and looking at the match result page, the order doesn’t reflect the same order as in the spreadsheet. I would see sighting from reserve B, then A, then B, then C etc. It’s completely random. It wasn’t the case before the upgrade.

What did you expect to happen?

  1. I’d expect that the system picks up the correct time and does not give an error.
  2. I’d expect the matching results to give the results in the same order as they are in my spreadsheet, as it used to be.

What are some steps we could take to reproduce the issue? Upload an import with sighting times at Midnight.
Bug ACW

There is another issue with the bulk import. Although all the encounters imported properly (i.e. I could see all the information as per the spreadsheet and in the order of the spreadsheet), now I have blank information for many encounters. I never had this issue before. I will send the spreadsheet by email. Please also see that the orders in the sighting column is completely mixed up and does not correspond to the order of the spreadsheet.

There’s only one 0 in the Encounter.hour field for your midnight entries on the spreadsheet. Excel is automatically formatting it after you click away from the cell. To prevent this, you need to right-click on the column, select Format Cells and then select the Text option. This prevents Excel from automatically reformatting your entries. Once I did this, it stopped changing “00” to “0” and the field was accepted during upload.

This is a known issue. There’s an open ticket for it here and I’ve added your example to it: Bulk import table does not display encounters in the same order as the spreadsheet it came from · Issue #1270 · WildMeOrg/Wildbook · GitHub

I’ll need more time to look into what’s causing the missing fields. Is it just the submitter ID and sighting IDs that are missing from these encounters?

Hi Anastasia,

Thanks for the trick regarding the zeros on Excel.

All the information is missing for the encounters with the unknown error. If you open the encounter (https://africancarnivore.wildbook.org/encounters/encounter.jsp?number=f5be7ecc-9fe8-4659-aeb3-a9e0ebc40d1a), it’s all blank.

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Oh wow, that’s interesting! I’ll dig into this more today.

The most likely culprit is Excel’s auto-formatting.

I noticed that the Encounter.submitterID and Encounter.submitter0.emailAddress field entries were hyperlinked. I removed the hyperlinks, changed the number field format to Text so it wouldn’t change the time, and then saved the file as a .csv and uploaded that as a test (CSV files tend to strip some of Excel’s formatting sneakiness away).

All of the encounters retained the dates and usernames in the bulk import table after these fixes.

Quick update: The issue with the bulk imported encounters displaying in a different order than in the spreadsheet will be resolved in the upcoming Wildbook 10.9 update.

Great, thank you Anastasia for the update!

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