Hi, I am Navid Hariri, one of the software engineers on the CRIPT project and I am one of the main developers on the Excel Uploader. I may be biased, but the Excel uploader is my favorite tool within CRIPT and by the end of this post I hope it’ll be your favorite too!
The CRIPT project aims to have different ways to input data into the platform for different needs. Our philosophy is to meet our scientists where they are and make their lives easier.
Scientists that have a lot of data stored in an irregular way and have some python experience (or know someone who does) may find that our Python SDK fits their needs the best so they can programmatically parse through their data and upload it to CRIPT. On the other hand, scientists that do not want to look at code may find the CRIPT Excel Uploader more suitable.
If you can use Excel and click buttons, then you are ready to use the Excel Uploader!
To get started with the Excel Uploader you’ll need 2 things:
- The CRIPT Excel template
- The latest Excel Uploader executable program for your operating system
- You can find the executable from either the Excel Uploader documentation or our GitHub
CRIPT Excel Template
The CRIPT Excel template has been engineered by our team to be as helpful as we can make it.
Technically, the Excel Uploader program will accept any Excel file that is compliant with the program. However, we know our scientists would rather spend their time doing cool experiments rather than creating Excel files from scratch, so we created one for you already.
To learn more about the structure of the Excel template, individual Excel sheets, and the Excel template features please visit the Excel Uploader documentation. You may also benefit from using Microsoft’s Excel Web that has a host of new features not yet available on the desktop version such as autocomplete dropdown, working with colleagues simultaneously, and more. We also have an in-depth documentation regarding Excel Web in the Excel template page of our documentation.
Each sheet in the Excel template is organized to take different information regarding your experiments. Each row is considered an Experiment and the whole file is called a Collection within the CRIPT platform.
There are required columns that every row must include a value for. The required columns are marked with an asterisk *, and if the column does not have an asterisk, then it is optional and can be skipped/deleted.
For example, every row within the data sheet must have a value for the *experiment, *name, *type, and *source column. If a new row is inputted and any required columns do not have values, then when uploading the Excel file with the Excel Uploader program, it will give an error and say that the Excel file is not fully compliant and cannot be uploaded until the issues are fixed.
Whichever sheet that is not being used can be deleted from the CRIPT Excel template. For example, if a scientist would like to only upload the materials, they can just input all the materials into the materials sheet and either delete the others sheets they are not using or keep them blank and upload to CRIPT happily!
Please note that every sheet within CRIPT Excel template is protected and locked without a password, this is because rows 1- 4 include validation and formulas and we wanted to protect against any accidental deletions or overwriting that could cause bad experiences. If needed, you can easily unlock any sheet and make the desired changes. Protected sheets are also documented within the Excel Uploader documentation within the Protected Sheets section.
CRIPT Excel Uploader Program
The Excel Uploader program requires the Chrome browser or Chromium browser to be already installed as a prerequisite.
Fill out the first screen with your information, and if you have any trouble please see our in-depth documentation regarding filling out the first screen of the Excel Uploader, click the Upload button, and watch the magic happen! 🪄
That’s it! Your data is now uploaded to CRIPT, and you can click the “See my data in CRIPT” button to be taken to the collection where your Excel file was just uploaded to.
