Bulk-uploading department-specific documents
The Bulk Upload interface allows you to upload many documents at the same time. It is specifically intended for documents that need to be related to specific government departments using metadata. This helps you upload the files, and metadata including filenames, the relevant financial year, the sphere of government, and the department name.
You can only upload documents for one sphere at a time - that is - either national, or provincial.
The bulk upload retrieves each file from the internet via the URLs that should be included in the uploaded spreadsheet. You do not need to upload the actual files yourself.
Open the Bulk Upload interface
Visit the Bulk Upload interface directly or from the menu on the Data Manager Admin homepage.
You need to be a Data Manager Admin to use the Bulk Upload interface.
Metadata spreadsheet template
You can download a spreadsheet to use as a template for uploading the metadata for your documents. It will include headings and comments on the headings to help you fill in the correct metadata.
Task queue
Since uploading many documents can take some time, a task queue is used to upload the documents in the background after you submit them (after previewing the upload)
Preview bulk upload
Upload a metadata spreadsheet
Limit the number of rows so that the upload does not time out
If you encounter what looks like network errors, the connection was probably closed because the checks of your metadata file took too long to complete.
Try a smaller number of rows. From experience, 20-40 rows at a time has worked well.
Both the preview and submit steps do many checks of your metadata file before queueing the task to import the department files. These checks can cause the metadata file submission to time out and result in a "network error" message in your browser.
Read this alongside the document metadata requirements.
Select the sphere of government the departments in the spreadsheet are part of
Select the metadata spreadsheet file
Click Submit
It is important to select the sphere in the correct financial year - since government departments can change year-to-year, their information is organised by financial year throughout the system.
Please ensure your spreadsheet is in XLSX format prior to uploading.
The Bulk Upload interface will check your metadata and show a preview of the changes that will take place
Preview and start bulk upload
After uploading your metadata file, the Bulk Upload interface will check the metadata against the departments in the Data Manager and the datasets in CKAN and show what actions it will take.
It is recommended that you first try a metadata file with only one or two rows, to make sure understand how it works correct. This would minimise the amount of work fixing any mistakes the first time you're using this.
If you click submit while the Bulk Upload interface shows a preview, it will queue any pending (blue) actions.
If upload the same metadata file again, it will re-check your metadata without queuing any pending actions. That way you can see which actions have been completed.
Green indicates something that is set up correctly already
Blue indicates something the Bulk Upload interface can take for you
Red indicates something is wrong
Hover your mouse over the cells in the table to see an explanation of that items current state, e.g. what action it would take(blue), or what the problem is (red).
When you are ready to upload the documents, click Submit below the preview table.
Check the bulk upload progress
After starting the bulk upload, you'll see the queue length has increased by the number of tasks needed to complete the bulk upload for your spreadsheet.
The easiest way to check that all documents were uploaded successfully is to upload the metadata spreadsheet again with the correct Sphere and preview the bulk upload process again
After the first set of tasks were submitted, and the Communications department spelling mistake was fixed and resubmitted, all documents are now uploaded to the right departments.
Completed uploads can also be seen in the CKAN
Task details
Queued tasks
You can check the progress of the queue by clicking on the queue length, or under the Queued tasks section in the Data Manager admin menu. When the Queued task list is empty, all tasks have been completed (succeeded or failed)
Successful tasks
When the tasks are completed, you should see them on the Successful tasks page. The most helpful information is the start/stop date and time. The task names are just randomly-generated human-readable names for developers to track issues.
Failed tasks
Tasks should only fail if an unexpected error occurred - the bulk upload interface tries to only queue tasks it expects to be successful. However if something goes wrong, more information about why it failed can be found in the Result and detail of the task. Click on the name for details.
Correcting mistakes
You can correct mistakes by finding the relevant dataset in CKAN, and modifying the dataset in-place.
Note that you can delete a dataset in CKAN, but it will just be hidden from the public with state "deleted". Bulk Upload interface won't be able to replace it until it's been purged.
Requirements and specific sets of documents
General requirements
While the vulekamali website uses the metadata of the document datasets to automatically find and link to the correct document for over a hundred departments, we use conventions for naming them to ensure the names and information make sense to users, and ease maintenance.
Metadata spreadsheet requirements
Only the worksheet named "Resources" will be used.
One row per document
Different formats for the same document (e.g. PDF, XLS) should be part of the same Dataset, so repeat department and dataset details, and only let the format and URL differ
resource_name and resource_format together are used to identify unique documents that form part of a dataset. You should therefore be consistent in how you name them to avoid ending up with multiple versions of the same document in the system unintentionally.
Column | Details |
government | Must be the government name with standard capitalisation, e.g. South Africa or KwaZulu-Natal |
group_id | The ID of the group in the CKAN that this document should be part of. Specific document set conventions in this section should indicate which group to use. Find the group_id in the URL of the group, e.g. for Adjusted Budget Vote Documents use |
department_name | Use the department name as in the DataManager. Capitalisation, spelling and hyphenation must match exactly. |
dataset_name | Must be unique in the entire system. See the convention for the specific set of documents in this section. We try to make this human-readable but ultimately it is intended to be a computer-readable ID. The Bulk Upload interface will help turn a name like "ENE 2018-19 - Vote 1 - The Presidency" into its slug "ene-2018-19-vote-1-the-presidency" |
dataset_title | This is the human-readable title of the dataset. We tend to include the document type abbreviation and financial year in the title to distinguish between the same dataset in different years in search results. |
resource_name | This can often be the same as the dataset title, then the format can be used to distinguish between the PDF view of this information, versus the Excel Spreadsheet tables in the PDF. |
resource_format | Should be the capitalised extension of the file, e.g. PDF or XLS or XLSX |
resource_url | The URL where the document should be found to fetch and upload to the CKAN. |
Conventions for specific sets of documents
When working with historical documents, check if these conventions were followed or if another convention was used to ensure you don't duplicate.
Estimates of National Expenditure Vote Chapters
We create a dataset per vote, and a resource for the PDF part of the ENE book specific to the vote, and a second resource for the spreadsheet used to produce the tables in the PDF.
We use the e-publication PDF rather than the smaller PDF that is just the chapter extract from the full ENE.
group: budget-vote-documents
dataset_name:
document type abbreviation e.g. ENE
financial year e.g. 2018-19
vote number e.g. Vote 1
department name e.g. The Presidency
e.g. before sluggifying: ENE 2018-19 - Vote 1 - The Presidency
e.g. the slug: ene-2018-19-vote-1-the-presidency
dataset_title: Same as the pre-sluggified version, e.g. ENE 2018-19 - Vote 1 - The Presidency
resource_name: Same as dataset_title
resource_format: PDF for the e-publication, XLS or XLSX for the spreadsheet used to produce the tables in the e-publication.
resource_url: The URL of the file on http://treasury.gov.za/
Estimates of Provincial Revenue and Expenditure Vote Chapters
We create a dataset per vote, and a resource for the PDF part of the EPRE specific to the vote, and a second resource for the spreadsheet used to produce the tables in the PDF.
group: budget-vote-documents
dataset_id:
Province code e.g. NW
document type abbreviation i.e. EPRE
financial year e.g. 2018-19
vote number e.g. Vote 1
department name e.g. Office of the premier
e.g. before sluggifying: NW EPRE 2018-19 - Vote 1 - Office of the Premier
e.g. the slug:
nw-epre-2018-19-vote-1-office-of-the-premier
dataset_title: Similar to the pre-sluggified dataset_id except the province in full e.g. North West EPRE 2018-19 - Vote 1 - Office of the Premier
resource_name: Same as dataset_title
resource_format: PDF for the chapter, XLS or XLSX for the spreadsheet used to produce the tables in the chapter.
resource_url: The URL of the file on http://treasury.gov.za/
Adjusted Estimates of National Expenditure Vote Chapters
We create a dataset per vote, and a resource for the PDF part of the AENE specific to the vote, and a second resource for the spreadsheet used to produce the tables in the PDF.
group: adjusted-budget-vote-documents
dataset_id:
document type abbreviation e.g. AENE
financial year e.g. 2018-19
vote number e.g. Vote 1
department name e.g. The Presidency
e.g. before sluggifying: AENE 2018-19 - Vote 1 - The Presidency
e.g. the slug: aene-2018-19-vote-1-the-presidency
dataset_title: Same as the pre-sluggified version, e.g. AENE 2018-19 - Vote 1 - The Presidency
resource_name: Same as dataset_title
resource_format: PDF for the chapter, XLS or XLSX for the spreadsheet used to produce the tables in the chapter.
resource_url: The URL of the file on http://treasury.gov.za/
Adjusted Estimates of Provincial Revenue and Expenditure Vote Chapters
We create a dataset per vote, and a resource for the PDF part of the AEPRE specific to the vote, and a second resource for the spreadsheet used to produce the tables in the PDF.
group: adjusted-budget-vote-documents
dataset_id:
Province code e.g. NW
document type abbreviation i.e. AEPRE
financial year e.g. 2018-19
vote number e.g. Vote 1
department name e.g. Office of the premier
e.g. before sluggifying: NW AEPRE 2018-19 - Vote 1 - Office of the Premier
e.g. the slug:
nw-aepre-2018-19-vote-1-office-of-the-premier
dataset_title: Similar to the pre-sluggified dataset_id except the province in full e.g. North West AEPRE 2018-19 - Vote 1 - Office of the Premier
resource_name: Same as dataset_title
resource_format: PDF for the chapter, XLS or XLSX for the spreadsheet used to produce the tables in the chapter.
resource_url: The URL of the file on http://treasury.gov.za/
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