How do I import images and documents when importing from Excel in AssetSonar?

You can create document linkages for items right as you update or upload them via an Excel sheet. Furthermore, you can attach up to 5 public media file URLs upon item import.

But what are media file URLs? These are the web addresses that direct you to media files uploaded online. You can access these by right-clicking on an image, hitting ‘Inspect’, and viewing the source attribute (more on that below). However, it is important to note that these addresses appear differently depending on the domain. For this reason, you might have to edit your links before you can add them to your Excel file, prior to the import.

Editing Dropbox media file URLs

Dropbox links end in the code “dl=0” or “dl=1”. Update this to “raw=1” before adding them to the Excel sheet.

For example, the link https://www.dropbox.com/s/buz195ijl5ct6nv/1a.PNG?dl=0 needs to be edited to https://www.dropbox.com/s/buz195ijl5ct6nv/1a.PNG?raw=1. Once you’ve edited it, it’s ready to be copied to your Excel.

Editing all other media file URLs

Web addresses for media files generally end in their extension i.e. .jpeg for JPEG image type, .png for PNG image type, .gif for GIF image type, and so on. As an example, here’s what the URL for an image on our faq site looks like https://ezo.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/businessman-riding-rocket-launching-from-smart-phones_70921-315.jpg. Notice how the image extension is at the very end of the address. Here’s how to get this address for your image.

1. Navigate to the website where the image exists.
2. Once here, right-click on the media file and hit inspect to see the HTML code for this element.
   
3. The field highlighted in yellow shows the public URL for this image. It appears as the ‘source’ attribute (src in HTML).
4. Alternatively, you can right-click on the image, click on ‘Copy Image Address’, and paste this address to a text-box or text application to see what it looks like.
5. If the media extension (.jpg, .png, etc) is at the very end of the address, it’s ready to be copied to your Excel. This is true for the image shown above where the URL is https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*G2pEuYF0d6lQgKusx0W3qQ.png.
6. If the extension comes somewhere in the middle of the address, like https://example.com/images/television.png/112/dImL/, edit it to https://example.com/images/television.png.

Forming linkages

Once you’ve edited your public media file URLs, you can now copy them to your Excel. Add up to 5 document links – separated by commas – into a column in your excel sheet. Remember to assign them to the “Document attachments” mapping upon import. They should look something like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/Item46.jpg, http://bizplus.net/TransferDoc.jpg

Associating documents from the Account library

You can also associate documents right from the AssetSonar Document’s Library (Items → Documents) during the import. Just replace one (or more) of the public URLs with the file-name of the document.

e.g. “Flowchart12.jpg, https://upload.wikimedia.org/Item46.jpg“.

Exporting document list

Lastly, you can export a list of all your documents from More → Documents → Export → CSV. The export would include links to the URLs of each document.