Locations

Creating locations in the AT is fairly straightforward, especially for simple numeric ranges. AT's batch location creation tool is very handy here. Creating more complex locations, especially those with alphanumeric components, however, cannot be done in the AT. This was unfortunate for us because although the vast majority of our material is stored offsite, the number of distinct onsite locations we have is still close to 3000 given the unique combination of rooms, ranges, sections, and shelves. Rather than try to generate these manually in the AT, I chose to create them in Excel and then paste directly into the AT tables. Here's how I did it.

First (after having surveyed all of our locations to come up with room numbers, ranges, sections, and shelves), I opened the LocationsTable in Navicat and copied the last record into Excel. [note: we had entered in some locations already.] I then used this record to structure and format subsequent location entries and assign sequential locationIds. Excel's fill-in feature is extremely helpful here, especially for alphanumeric data. Simply typing in 1A1, for example, and then dragging the fill-in cross-hairs to the appropriate point, allows you to quickly generate values 1A1, 1A2,...1AX. Once finished adding in all your data, your spreadsheet should look like this: sample (.xls).

The final step is to paste the records into the LocationTable via Navicat. [note: as I explain in my post on creators, you need to make sure you are the only one using the AT when pasting in data or looking up ids. Again, this is to prevent overlap or duplication of work.] Once finished, check your work in the Locations module (Tools > Locations), making sure you can create additional (i.e. test) locations.