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Manifesting

In this guide you will learn:

  • What a manifest is and why it matters
  • How the client maps your data structure to finwave encounters
  • How source priority determines where each field comes from
  • The iterative propose-review-refine workflow

What manifesting does

Section titled “What manifesting does”

Manifesting takes the results of discovery and builds a manifest — a versioned, declarative document that describes how to interpret your organization’s data as finwave encounters. It answers questions like: “Where does the date come from — EXIF, folder names, or a spreadsheet?”, “How are individual IDs encoded?”, and “Which folder level is the encounter boundary?”

The manifest is the bridge between your data structure and finwave’s encounter schema.

finwave’s encounter schema

Section titled “finwave’s encounter schema”

An encounter in finwave requires:

  • Images — one or more image files
  • Date and time — when the sighting occurred
  • Location — coordinates and/or a place name (optional)
  • Photographer — who took the photos (optional)
  • Individuals — which animals were identified, using your organization’s ID codes (optional)

Manifesting determines, for each potential encounter in your scanned data, where to find values for these fields — or whether a field cannot be reliably extracted.

Source priority

Section titled “Source priority”

Each encounter field can come from multiple sources. The manifest records which source is authoritative for each field. The general priority order, from most to least reliable:

Date and time:

  1. EXIF DateTimeOriginal
  2. Date pattern in folder name
  3. Date pattern in file name

Location:

  1. EXIF GPS coordinates
  2. IPTC location fields
  3. Location pattern in folder name

GPS coordinates:

  1. EXIF GPS
  2. Spreadsheet columns (latitude/longitude)

Photographer:

  1. IPTC Creator field
  2. EXIF Artist field
  3. Photographer pattern in folder name

Individual IDs:

  1. ID pattern in folder name
  2. ID pattern in file name
  3. IPTC keywords or caption

You can override these priorities in the manifest editor.

Generating a manifest

Section titled “Generating a manifest”

After discovery completes, click Generate Manifest on the scan job detail page. If your organization has multiple populations, choose which population the manifest is for. The client uses the discovery results — image metadata, spreadsheet analysis, and folder patterns — to produce a draft manifest with best-guess field mappings.

If discovery detected a known spreadsheet format, the format’s column mappings are applied automatically.

The manifesting workflow

Section titled “The manifesting workflow”

Manifesting is an iterative, user-guided process:

1. Generate — A draft manifest is created from discovery results with initial field mappings.

2. Review — Open the manifest in the manifest editor to see how fields are mapped. Each field shows its source (EXIF, folder name, IPTC, spreadsheet) and the extraction rule.

3. Refine — Adjust any mapping that is incorrect. Change the source for a field, update path patterns, select different spreadsheet columns, or modify ID extraction rules. Each change creates a new manifest version.

4. Preview — Generate a preview to see up to 20 sample encounters with all mapped fields. Check field coverage statistics to verify the mappings work across your dataset.

5. Approve — When the preview looks correct, approve the manifest. Approval locks the mapping rules and records your username and timestamp.

ID parsing

Section titled “ID parsing”

If your data includes individual identification codes, the manifest uses your population’s identifier verifier configuration to parse them:

  • Pattern — a regex compiled from your population’s ID verifier rules (for example, [TGJ]\d{3}[A-Z]? for Bigg’s-style codes)
  • Source — where IDs come from (folder name, file name, or IPTC fields)

The manifest editor shows the compiled regex and example IDs so you can verify the pattern matches your data.

Section titled “Related”