coreContentOnly - Remote Metadata Update Via Excel

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Remote Metadata Update Via Excel by Jason Stortz

Some of you may have used or even still have an excel spreadsheet which can be used to update metadata. This spreadsheet was originally provided by the former content server creator, Stellent. I am actually unaware of the name or names of the original author or authors and as such have not credited them here. Leave your name to take credit! Some people love it. Some people hate it. Either way, it has been useful to me.

The original style sheet allowed users to specify additional custom columns named after their custom metadata. It offered two buttons. The first was “submit query” which invoked the user defined query string located to the left of the button. The second button “update” would cycle through each of the result records from the query and update the metadata based on the values in the spreadsheet.

I have updated the spreadsheet in two ways. I have added a login button which simply causes a prompt for user credentials. The importance of this button is the reduction in steps needed to update secured content. With the original spreadsheet the user first had to search on public content only and invoke an update which then prompted for credentials after which the user could conduct another search which would then have the credentials to access secured content. With the login button we can now skip this cycle. The second change is a new worksheet which contains configuration variables for the searches. Currently there are three configuration variables including ResultCount, SortField and SortOrder.

Additionally I often get asked how one can use this spreadsheet to update metadata only check-in’s. The trick is an additional column named createPrimaryMetaFile. This column should be set to TRUE if that record represents a metadata only check in.

This file and all updates to it are presented here as-is with no support implied or otherwise. As always, use at your own risk.

References:

remoteMetadataUpdater_20080924.xls (194 KB)

Wednesday, September 24, 2008 10:24:20 AM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [4] OpenWorld 2008 | Oracle UCM |

Wednesday, September 24, 2008 10:49:33 AM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)

Hey Jason,

It was originally written by Brian "Bex" Huff. He's out at Oracle Open World as well. So if you run into him, buy him a beer for this little utility.

I presented this as one of the "Cool Tools used at Stellent" at Stellent's last Crescendo user conference and we had people rushing the stage to get a copy. But I'd like to hear why anyone would hate it.

Great additions by the way!

Kyle Hatlestad

Wednesday, September 24, 2008 11:48:47 AM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)

Great work as always.
I thought Bex was the author of the spreadsheet meta update tool?

The original is featured on http://bezzotech.com/library.

John Sim

Wednesday, September 24, 2008 2:41:43 PM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)

Wow the most comments ever for one of my posts so far. :)

Ok, so it looks like we have a gathering that say Bex wrote this so that's sweet. As for "some people hate it" I have run into a couple people that have screwed up their system with it, but you know how it goes. They didn't do something right and they blame the new tool. There has been some discussion the forum about it. Most everything negative I have heard about it has been related to people doing things they shouldn't. It's like any other tool, use it wrong and beware.

For me, works grrrreat!!

Jason Stortz

Thursday, September 25, 2008 3:10:35 AM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)

This tool has saved me a couple time, and its so so much faster than using archiver to update meta fields.

John Sim

Comments are closed.