Bulk edit - what is the best way?

Questions
1

Hello,

I have an app with 10,000 items that I uploaded once.

Now I added a new attribute to the field item and I want to

  • populate it with a value that is specific to each item (it’s all in an excel)
  • keep the original unique id (i have external links to it)

what is the best way to achieve this?

Thanks,
Jules

1 Like
2

  1. Create an API workflow that will accomplish what you want to do for each item. As an example, let’s say I want to make changes to every User in the database. I have their First Name and Last Name, but not their Full Name. I would create an API workflow that would contain a User. The action within this would be to make a change to that User.

  2. Create a blank test page. Add a button. Attach a “schedule API workflow on a list” action to that button when it’s clicked. Continuing my example above, I’d select the API workflow I just created and search for the List of Users I want to change.

IMPORTANT STEPS

  • When scheduling an API Workflow on a list, make sure you start it about 5 minutes after the current date. This way, your 10,000 items can be scheduled before workflows actually begin
  • Depending on how extensive your actions are in the API Workflow, set an interval of at least 5 seconds. This means in 1 minute, 12 items will be updated. This means all of your items will be complete in approx. 10,000/12/60 = 14 hours. This step is important. You don’t want your site to crash so spacing out your workflows is the best solution.

Hope this helps,
Daniel

1 Like
3

Thanks Daniel,

The piece I am missing here is that i want to perform a different action for each item.

In my case, I want to add the UPC of each 10,000 item based on their item ID that is already in the database.
And what I have right now is an excel with items IDs and corresponding UPCs.

Make sense?

Jules

4

Just to be clear, by item ID, do you mean the unique ID?

5

It is a different ID i created but i could use the unique id as well.

Basically I have an excel with 3 colums: unique id / item id / upc
And in the database the upc is empty and i want to populate it with each unique value from the excel.

Thanks!

Jules

6

Ok, then do the following:

  1. Create a new database table we will call “New Item”. The 3 fields should be “Unique ID”, “Item ID”, and “UPC”. Download your excel into a csv file. Then upload this into “New Item”.
    *We’ll refer to the Unique ID’s type as “Old Item”.

  2. Create an API workflow that holds “New Item”. The action should be to make changes to “New Item’s Old Item”. Now, Old Item’s UPC should be changes to “New Item’s UPC”.

  3. Create a blank test page. Add a button. Attach a “schedule API workflow on a list” action to that button when it’s clicked. The list to be scheduled is the entire list of “New Items”

  4. Click the button. Make sure you’re in the development site if your database items are in the development database or in the live site if your database items are in the live database.

This is the best I can explain it. Lmk if you have questions.

7

Aha, that’s a good way to do it indeed.

It requires a bit of work but I guess it will do the trick. Smart.

I will try that out.

Thanks Daniel !!

Jules

1 Like
8

Please make sure you set the interval to at least 5 seconds and just for safety, schedule the start of the API workflow to the current time + 10 minutes or something like that. 10,000 items is a lot!

Good luck and lmk if it works out.

1 Like
9

Can you show a picture of how you are scheduling after 10 minutes. I see seconds, hours but not minutes.

10

Correct. But we do know how many seconds are in a minute or hour.

1 Like
11

Is it set that 12 items are created in a minute or it depends on the type of data you have or is just an estimate?