Export Data Feature

[PipBrewer]

The issue is that the digitizers are having to open a SQLite browser and through this pull up the 'specimen' table and export the day's work as a csv file to the N drive/specific folder. We wish to reduced the amount of steps the digitization staff need to perform to complete a day's work.

Relevance

The process for moving the digitization effort from a workstation to the N drive is needlessly complicated and could potentially be a source for mistakes.

Effort required

It is a difficult task, yet Fedor has done work on this and made a proof of concept.

What is the expected acceptable result.

An implemented mechanism that enables the digitizer to trigger the creation of an export file. This file will still need to be transferred manually to the N drive export location (at least in this iteration of the app).

How to approach it?

Obtain all records from the specimen table by digitizer logged in name and the work date (should be the current day). Write this to a csv file.

What would be the challenges

I see the challenges as decisions around the workflow, like : What are the criteria for a single data export?
Should the data be removed from the specimen table afterwards? How should the export feature be implemented in the app? Should the digitizer be able to export data made by other digitizers, and should there be an option for selecting other dates than "today"?

Potential risks

The current very hands on approach to data export does give the digitizer an opportunity to review the digitized data, that would be lost by a more automated process, unless a digest of sorts was made available to the staff upon triggering the auto export mechanism (this in itself is a large topic).

Tests

Using a well defined dataset for testing should adequately highlight any issues. A suite of predefined tests could be deployed.

Documentation

Updates to the app user manual would be needed.

• [x] Ability to export table as spreadsheet file for importing into Specify
• [x] Allow for marking exported records so they will not be exported a second time see #131

[FedorSteeman]

Got a basic export feature to work, but still need to implement the tasks above.

[jlegind]

Though they are ticked off, the features: Ability to export table as spreadsheet file for importing into Specify, and Allow for marking exported records so they will not be exported a second time ... are implemented but made invisible for the moment.