Copying Data

In some circumstances, strategic plans may stretch over 5, 10, or more years in order to complete them. Planning makes it easy to for site administrator to copy data from one time period to the next. This is usually when items (goals, objectives, initiatives, etc…) related to a plan do not change from one year to the next, but rather simply need to be updated. It should be pointed out that only institutional site administrators may copy data.

LAB TIP: Before you copy data from one year to another it is important to ensure that your organizational structures have established a connection for all units that exist in both years. If you copy data and a department that exists in the year you are copying from and not in the year you are copying to your data will not be copied. Only units that were copied over when the organizational structure was created for the year you are copying to will be able to receive data from the year you are copying from. *It is important that you speak with your consultant first before copying data. It is also recommended that you review the copied data before you or your users begin entering new data to ensure the copy has been successful.

To copy data inside of planning you will need to navigate to the settings area in the left-hand menu indicated by the gear icon . Before you are able to copy any data you will need to lock the time period that you are copying data from. To do this navigate to the “General Settings” block in the settings menu, click on the edit button and then click the “Lock Time Period” option.

Once you have locked a the time period you would like to copy data from, navigate back to the settings menu and click on the “Copy Items” block as outlined in the screenshot below.

Before being able to process a copy a user is required to provide a name and description in order to complete the copy process. It is important to provide a copy with a unique title and description, as these fields will serve as a historical reference. In addition to historical purposes, these fields are also referenced in the Copy Rollback feature as well.

From here you will select the time period you had previously locked, only locked time periods will appear in the “Copy From:” menu. Then you will select the time period you would like to copy this data to, you will not be able to select a year to copy data to until you have selected a year to copy data from. Only unlocked time periods will display in the “Copy To:” menu and can have data copied to them.

Once you have selected time periods to copy data from and to, a menu will appear below the time period selector for you to select which template(s) and field(s) you would like to copy.

Clicking the box next to the plan will select all templates of that plan and the system required fields (title, start/end date, progress, providing department, responsible users) to be copied. This is indicated by a green box with a minus sign . This means that only the system required fields are selected for the copy.

If you would like to select all fields within a given template, simply double click the box to the left of the template until a green checkmark  appears. This indicates that all child elements have been selected. This means all fields within a template or all templates and fields within a plan.

Fields not selected during the copy will then be given a blank field for the year they are being copied to. For example, if we do not choose “Objective Description,” as shown below, to be copied from one year to the next, then all that will appear for all objectives will be the title, responsible users, number, start and end date, and providing department. The description field will start off as a blank text box.

In addition to choosing which templates and fields you would like to copy over, you will also need to decide if you would like to copy established item relationships you or your users have created.

Much like copying data, this setting applies site wide and choosing specific item relationships is not possible.

Keep in mind that items that span multiple fiscal years will not copy nor any items being copy that are related to an item that span multiple fiscal year.