You are viewing limited content. For full access, please sign in.

Question

Question

How to Import Files and Metadata from Excel into Laserfiche 12 (Self-Hosted)?

Web Client Self-Hosted Laserfiche API Workflow How To
Updated June 29
asked on June 28

I am using Laserfiche 12 Self-Hosted and I need to import a large number of documents into the repository.

I have an Excel spreadsheet that contains:

  • The full file path for each document stored on my local computer.

  • Metadata values for each document (one row per document).

I would like to know if there is a tool or utility that can:

  1. Read the file paths directly from the Excel spreadsheet.

  2. Import the corresponding files into Laserfiche.

  3. Map the Excel columns to the fields in a Laserfiche template.

  4. Apply the metadata automatically during the import process.

Is there a built-in Laserfiche tool that supports this, or is there a recommended approach (such as Import Agent, Quick Fields, Workflow, SDK, or another utility)?

My goal is to import the files and their metadata directly from Excel without having to enter the metadata manually.

Any guidance or best practices would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

0 0

Replies

replied on June 29

There are a few ways to do this but the approach I generally use is along these lines:
 

  1. Drag and drop files into a staging folder within Laserfiche (this assumes the entire folder contents are to be imported). When importing the documents you can map the Windows filepath to a Laserfiche field using the "File Path" token. You'll have to use the desktop client here as Web Client can't import entire folders.
  2. Import the Excel file to SQL Server (you may need to save as a CSV or XLS file first)
  3. Create a workflow that searches the folder to which the documents have been imported to in Laserfiche and loops through each document. Use a query data activity to lookup the metadata from step 2. If the filename is unique you can use that as the lookup field, or use the File Path field that you mapped in step 1. NB: When mapping the File Path token, Laserfiche replaces backslashes with forward slashes so you may need to replace those using the substitute function in a token calculator activity. 
  4. Use the Assign Metadata activity to assign the field values retreived from the lookup to each document and move the document to the target folder (if needed)
2 0
You are not allowed to follow up in this post.

Sign in to reply to this post.

Details
Related Posts
Loading ...