MultiFile plugin

Note: If you want to use the TabularCsv plugin from inside the MultiFile plugin, you'll need to use the MultiFile.Configurator.exe tool in order to expose your TabularCsv TOML configurations through the MultiFile parsing sequence.

Why MultiFile?

The MultiFile plugin exists because field visit data can often arrive in multiple file formats (eg. A FlowTracker2 measurement file, plus some custom field visit CSV from your organization). If both bits of field data occured on Wednesday at the same location, ideally you want both activities represented as a single AQTS field visit.

This scenario (the same day, same location, but different source data files) is what we call the visit merge problem, and it isn't quite clear how to solve it for all possible customers, so AQTS doesn't allow it out of the box.

In an ideal world, the MultiFile plugin should not be necessary. In fact, you should check your AQTS release notes to see if the visit merge problem has finally been solved. If it has, just delete the MultiFile plugin and use the built-in functionality, since that will offer the most robust & supportable workflow for your organization.

What if I don't use the MultiFile plugin?

You could just upload the two Wednesday files individually to AQTS. This will work, but your location will be left with two separate visits, both on Wednesday. AQTS will continue to operate correctly.

But having more than one visit on any given day can confuse your organization's workflow, especially when dealing with approval workflows.

You can no longer quickly answer the question of "Is the Wednesday visit approved?", since "the Wednesday visit" might not be correct. You may have more than one Wednesday visit, from different source files, and each visit can have a different approval status.

So the MultiFile plugin was created by the Aquatic Informatics Applications Engineering team to reduce the chances that two Wednesday visits are created.

Can I use MultiFile to merge new data with existing FV data?

Nope.

MultiFile can only be used when all the FV data you want to import doesn't yet exist in AQTS.

• Field data plugins do not have access to any other field data or most other parts of the system.
• Field data plugins can only read the input file content and decide how to transform that content into a new set of AQTS field visits.

So the MultiFile plugin looks only at its input file (the ZIP archive) and attempts to do its from there.