Importing and updating Chronology entries, especially with larger/data-heavy or more complex Chronologies, can be tricky and prone to error. Here are some best practices that will hopefully assist users with importing or updating Chronology entries in Opus 2 and ensure that all the necessary preparatory work is done in the CSV import file prior to proceeding:
NOTE: If there are any further questions or if clarification is needed with any of the below processes, please contact the Opus 2 Support team at support-us@opus2.com.
CHRONOLOGY BEST PRACTICES
- When adding Characters manually to Chronology: Refresh browser cache whenever Characters are added to an entry to avoid creating multiple Character entries. (The "Refresh" action needs to happen after you hit “SAVE” in the Edit Entry dialog, and ensures that changes are applied and displayed prior to the next action.)
- Additionally, when adding new Characters, the Character(s) need to be properly created and set up in the Characters worksheet first.
- Lastly, ensure that the Character name in the CSV must be spelled and typed out EXACTLY the same as it is in the worksheet; i.e., if the Character is listed in the Chracters worksheet as John Smith, it cannot be typed in as Smith, John when being added to an entry. A misspelled or differently set up Character name will create a duplicate character.
- Additionally, when adding new Characters, the Character(s) need to be properly created and set up in the Characters worksheet first.
- Chronology Timezone when importing a CSV to add entries: Please note that the Opus 2 DEFAULT TIME ZONE is GMT and this is applied to Chronology entries. If your import CSV has a different timezone label for the time stamps, these will need to be globally edited to indicate the timezone difference from GMT. For example: if the timezone in your import file is CST, this is to be replaced with -6 to show that the corresponding time in the same row is 6 hours behind GMT; otherwise, no dates or times will be displayed after import.
- Link Entries to Sources: When linking entries to sources, please double check the DOCUMENT NAME of the Source in the Link Entries to Sources dialog. Check carefully that the correct source is named and selected prior to proceeding with linking, or Opus 2 will attempt to link to any duplicates or similarly named documents, resulting in duplicative or incorrect linking. In the below example. we have deselected the checkbox for "exhibit 61. pdf" as it is similarly named as "Exhibit 61", but is not the actual source document we want to link.
To avoid duplicate linking, also take care to remove any unwanted duplicate documents from the workspace in general prior to attempting Source linking. - Update entries using Chron ID: When importing a CSV to update entries, the unique Chronology IDs need to be present as a column in the import file (and this column can be obtained via a preliminary CSV or XLSX export out of the Chronology), or else the Chronology will create new entries duplicative of existing ones.
- Also, make sure to clear the Sources column of its values while still including the column itself (just keep the column empty) - UNLESS you are adding new sources, in which case the column needs to be populated with the new Sources' document names only. Otherwise, if you are not adding new Sources and keep the Sources column populated in the CSV, Opus will create duplicate sources for the entries.
- Adding new sources:
- Not adding new sources:
- New Chronology Custom fields: If you are doing a CSV import to create a new Chronology or update an existing one, if your CSV includes a NEW Chronology field, create the field first in the Manage Chronologies dialog before doing the import to ensure that the field is included in your import and that corresponding values applied to it.
- Date modifier column. Ensure that a Date Modifier column is included in your import CSV so that values are correctly applied.
