Text snippets can be a useful way to provide direct access to subject matter expertise in bite-sized pieces, in order to build a personalized document without gathering those subject matter experts every time you’re building a new proposal or document.

Over time, things change, and information can be quickly outdated if not updated regularly. If your organization maintains more than a handful of text snippets, the regular management can become time-consuming. To help expedite the process, you can export all your text snippet data to a CSV file to work on updates.

Export all Text Snippets

To export all text snippets, click on the export icon in the left-hand panel. Text snippets are exported in a CSV format and include the following fields:

  • Name – The name of the text snippet
  • Snippet – The body of the text snippet. This is exported in HTML format.
  • Visibility – This indicates whether or not the text snippet is shared. “1” represents a public text snippet, and “0” represents private (if workgroups are enabled, “1” represents all workgroups, “0” represents no workgroups, and “2” represents some workgroups).
  • Locked for Edit – This indicates whether or not the text snippet is locked from being edited by others. “1” represents that it is locked for edit, and “0” represents that it’s not locked.
  • Tags – Displays all tags associated with this text snippet.
  • Publish Date – The publish date of the text snippet, which is the date it becomes available for use to pull into documents.
  • Expiration Date – The expiration date of the text snippet, which is the date it is no longer available for use to pull into documents.
  • Last Modified Date – The last modified date of the text snippet, which is the last time the snippet has been modified.
  • ID – This represents the unique ID of the text snippet. This ID will be used to allow users to override the existing text snippet upon re-import.

Import Text Snippets

Many organizations use the text snippet export to update the content, and they want to import and override the existing text snippet. To do so, from within the Content page:

  1. Select Add New
  2. Select Text Snippet
  3. Select “Bulk Upload” to import a list of text snippets (use the export spreadsheet, update the Snippet content, and re-import the file. The ID field indicates which text snippet will be replaced upon import).

The following fields can be adjusted when replacing an existing text snippet:

  • Name – This will allow you to rename the snippet
  • Snippet – This will allow you to replace the text of the snippet. Note the snippet is displaying in HTML format. This will allow the snippet to retain formatting upon re-import.
  • Visibility – This allows you to change whether or not the text snippet is shared. “1” represents a public text snippet, and “0” represents private (if workgroups are enabled, “1” represents all workgroups, “0” represents no workgroups, and “2” represents some workgroups. You cannot adjust which workgroups are shared via import).
  • Locked for Edit – You can decide whether or not the text snippet is locked from being edited by others. “1” represents that it is locked for edit, and “0” represents that it’s not locked.
  • Publish Date – Update the publish date of the text snippet, which is the date it becomes available for use to pull into documents. Note that if excel changes the date format to MM/DD/YYYY then Collaborate will ignore this field (Excel is extremely particular about date formatting. We recommend only importing dates if you are comfortable with Excel – we recommend updating dates in the Collaborate UI).
  • Expiration Date – Update the expiration date of the text snippet, which is the date it is no longer available for use to pull into documents. Note that if excel changes the date format to MM/DD/YYYY then Collaborate will ignore this field (Excel is extremely particular about date formatting. We recommend only importing dates if you are comfortable with Excel – we recommend updating dates in the Collaborate UI).

If your spreadsheet includes snippets without an ID or with an ID that doesn’t match, they will be imported as new text snippets. IDs are assigned by the system and cannot be assigned by the import file.