Set Up a Uniqueness Rule

As a Project Manager or Admin, it may become necessary to ensure that certain dropdown and free text fields, or combinations of such, need to be unique to avoid creating identical records, which may lead to inaccurate reporting. 

Once set, the uniqueness rules will prevent the creation of records with the same metadata, and will also validate these rules on creating, editing and duplicating records.

Note: If you are unsure about using uniqueness rules, please reach out to your Accutics contact to discuss further.

Overview of Process

1. Access project configuration

    From the side navigation bar click Settings - Configuration - Uniqueness rules

2. Click Add rule

    You have the ability to name each rule. It's recommended that the name should indicate what input fields the rules contain

3. Click Add field and then select the input field(s) that will now need to be included the rule. Repeat this process for each input fields that needs to be included
4. Once all input fields that are needing to be included in the rule are added you are ready to save and test, or publish
5. Once you are happy that your rules are correct, hit Publish to publish all changes to the configuration.

Note: Once the rules are published, it will take some time for the rules to process. The more existing records in the project the longer it will take to process. Please make sure you have enough time to set these up, publish and adequate processing time.

You will know once your rules have finished processing as you will get a green tick on the Uniqueness rules option on the Configuration page. Once you see the checkmark, the rule is in effect.

Error Handling

Once your rules have been set up and published, if a user tries to create a record that contravenes any of these rules, they will not be able to submit that record and they will also see the errors highlighted on screen so that they can be easily identified and corrected. 

Single Record Error Handling

To correct an error on the single record creation form, if users attempted to enter a record which triggers the uniqueness rules, orange error messages will appear on the datasets where the conflict occurs.

There is also a conflict count at the foot of the page. To begin correcting the errors, click the error count box which will open an error panel which will highlight all the conflicts found. From here you can click the Open conflicting record(s) panel.

From here you can see the original record where the conflict arises.

You can choose to edit the old record or edit the record you are trying to submit. Once the error is corrected, you will receive a green tick in place of the Conflicting records panel, and you can now proceed to submit your record.

Bulk Table Error Handling

When entering multiple records in the Bulk create table any conflicts will be flagged with an orange box around the dataset which has triggered the rule. You will also see the Show conflicts panel appear above the bulk create table.

You can directly correct the highlighted datasets to be able to submit your records. If you wish to check the conflicting record, click the Show conflict panel, and you will be presented with the detailed conflict panel. From here you can choose to edit the record you have just attempted to enter or you can open the original record.

Once the the appropriate record has been edited so that there are no conflicts you will then be able to publish.

Note, that the conflict could also be caused be one or more of the records you're currently creating in the bulk table. You can jump to any of the conflicting rows in the table, by clicking on the corresponding "Go to row" button.

Import Error Handling

The process for error handling when using the import function is a similar workflow to the Bulk create table. A user that attempts to upload their pre-filled Standardize template which contains records that do not respect the uniqueness rules will be highlighted in the bulk create table as before.

Again, the user can make corrections directly in the bulk table or check and edit the original records by locating them using the Show conflicts panel.