Creating multiple Aeon requests from Excel
- Marilyn Rackley
In the Aeon Client, staff can batch create requests for a user or activity from an Excel spreadsheet. This feature is available on the user and activity forms from the button labels "New Requests from File". On the user form, the 'New Request' is now a split button with two dropdown options: New Request for User and New Requests from File.
More information on how to use this feature is available in the Aeon documentation.
The spreadsheet can contain as little or as much information as is appropriate for the requests you are creating. It is not necessary to fill out every field when creating requests from Excel. Below are two templates that include all the possible fields fields that can be filled out for each type of request.
- Excel Template for Reading Room
- Excel Template for Activity Requests
- Excel Template for Photoduplication Requests
Columns in the Excel spreadsheet must match an Aeon database field name, which is not always the same as the staff client display name for a field. Use the Fields Currently Used at Harvard table to determine what information to include in each column of the template.
NOTE: Make sure your spreadsheet does not include any cell formatting. Aeon may mistake rows with only cell formatting as rows to import and will then create blank requests.
There is currently a bug in the Excel file upload that will prevent Aeon from correctly associating a request with an activity or a researcher if both the ResearcherUsername and ActivityID columns are present in the Excel file. When creating activity requests, use the activity requests template.
Fields Currently Used at Harvard
Aeon Field Name | Harvard Field Name | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Site | Site | You must specify a Site value. If you leave the Site field blank, your requests may not be visible in the client after you create them. |
| Username | Username | Will be filled in automatically by Aeon. |
| ResearcherUsername | Researcher Username | Must correspond to an existing user who is a researcher for the user the request is being created for (defined in the proxy links). Additionally, you cannot provide both a ResearcherUsername and ActivityID for the same request; a request may not be associated with both a researcher and an activity at the same time. |
| ActivityID | Activity ID | Will be filled in automatically by Aeon if creating requests from an activity record. |
| TransactionStatus | Transaction Status | Will be filled in automatically by Aeon. |
| DocumentType | Material Type | Should match controlled vocabulary in Aeon. |
| ItemAuthor | Author | |
| ItemTitle | Title | |
| ItemSubTitle | Additional Title | |
ItemCitation | Series/Subseries | For manuscripts and archives |
| ItemDate | Date | |
| ItemPublisher | Publisher, Place of Publication | |
| ReferenceNumber | HOLLIS ID | |
| ItemVolume | Volume/Box | |
| ItemIssue | Folder/Item | |
| ItemNumber | Barcode | |
ItemISxN | Host Container | |
| CallNumber | Call Number | |
| Location | Owning Library | Should generally match Site |
| SubLocation | SubLocation (Collection) | |
| Format | Desired Format | For photoduplication requests - Must correspond to a valid format option. |
| ServiceLevel | Service Level | For photoduplication requests - Must correspond to a valid service level option. |
| ShippingOption | Shipping Option | For photoduplication requests - Must correspond to a valid shipping option. |
| ForPublication | For Publication | Must be empty or 'Yes' or 'No'. |
| ScheduledDate | Scheduled Date | This must be either empty or specified in 'yyyy-mm-dd' format. |
| ItemInfo1 | Container Count | |
| ItemInfo2 | Collection Restrictions | |
| ItemPlace | Item/Series Restrictions | |
| ItemInfo3 | Description | |
| ItemInfo4 | Staff Note | |
| ItemInfo5 | Paging Note | |
| SpecialRequest | Special Request | |
| PhotoduplicationStatus | Photoduplication Status | This value must be specified by the queue ID to create photoduplication requests |