For an existing installation that has no collection object entries yet, we needed to change the catalog number format. Originally, it was just 9 numeric digits, but we wanted to change it so it’s 8 numeric digits preceded by a constant text string of “AU”.
So I went into the schema configuration to add this formatting option for the catalogNumber field. However, I could not find any way to do this in Specify7, so I added it in Specify6 instead. When done, I could see that the formatting option added and selected in Specify7 too:
I saw that prefixing the catalog number is not recommended (Why Not to Use a Prefix in Your Catalog Number), so I suppose it’s better to prefix the AU in a different way, but I still need to change the formatting to 8 digits and also make sure that leading zeroes are shown too.
You’ll need to set the CatalogFormatNumName value in the collection record for your current collection to the name of the field format you’ve defined (e.g. CatalogNumberAU). It looks like you’ve already seen the guide that describes the process, so let me know if you are still having trouble!
Coming in a future update of Specify 7, we’ve added this field to the Collection data form in a read-only capacity. This change will allow you to easily make the field editable and replace the value with the appropriate format.
You can even create a custom Collection form and add this field to it now, then change the value from there rather than making SQL database edits.
@fedoras I would guard against including the acronym into your catalog number given that there are separate fields in DwC for catalog number and collection and institutional codes. It will be much more difficult to separate them again to publish. There are fields in the collection and institution tables for these codes that could always be appended for printing labels or other needs rather than hard coding it into the catalog number field.
