Importing and exporting settings

Settings › Import / export takes your configuration with you in a file: services, ranks, forms, reference lists. Use it as a backup, or to copy your configuration to another server without redoing everything by hand. This section is reserved to the organization’s administrators: it can’t be delegated.

The prepared export: what the file contains

What the file contains

A readable JSON file, with:

• the settings: time zone, default language, accent color, currency, and the choice between one penal code or one code per police department;
• the services (type, color, modules, callsigns) and their ranks with their permissions;
• the forms and their fields, with base field settings (labels, hidden fields, location input), operation types’ roles of officers on scene, and, for offense file types, their levels, review and legal statuses;
• the reference lists, with all their rows. A penal code travels with its offense levels, sentencing degrees and sentence unit.

Nothing personal: no members, no records, no audit log. The organization’s name and logo, and the settings of the Operations, Live map, Game, Discord and Notifications pages are not part of the file.

Exporting

1. Click Prepare the export. SuperMDT reads the configuration and the rows of your reference lists.
2. Check the summary: number of services, ranks, forms, fields, reference lists and rows.
3. Click Download the file. It’s named <address>-configuration-<date>.json.

Read again redoes the reading, for example after a change. A configuration that is still empty has nothing to export: the card says so.

Importing

1. In the Import card, drop the file or click Choose a file (a .json file exported from SuperMDT, 20 MB at most).
2. SuperMDT shows the file’s name, its export date and its content, sorted into four parts: Settings, Services and ranks, Forms and fields, Reference lists and their rows.
3. Under “What do you want to add?”, tick the parts to add. Settings are never ticked by default; a part missing from the file is greyed out (“Not in the file”). Choose another file starts over.
4. Click Import, then wait for it to finish: reference list rows arrive in batches, with a progress bar.

At the end, “Import complete” shows what was added; Import another file starts again. Rejected rows (incomplete or badly filled) are listed with their reference list, their number and the column at fault: fix them by hand in the reference list.

Importing adds, it never replaces

Everything is added next to what exists: importing the same file twice creates duplicates. Only the Settings, if ticked, replace the organization’s own (time zone, default language, accent color, currency and penal code mode).

Two exceptions to that rule:

• The penal code follows the receiving organization’s mode. If a code already exists for the same scope, it is completed rather than duplicated: levels with the same name are reused, missing sentencing degrees are added.
• Limits apply: an import that would go past 20 services is refused as a whole.

Every import is written to the audit log. If the import stops midway (lost connection…), what came before the error was added: check before running it again, to avoid duplicates.

Linked parts

Some parts depend on others. If you import the forms without:

• the services: types restricted to a service become shared by all services;
• the reference lists: Reference list fields become free text.

Likewise, an MDT member field imported without the services becomes text.

SuperMDT warns you before importing when that’s the case.

A file that is damaged, edited by hand or comes from a newer version of SuperMDT is refused with a message explaining why; nothing is imported.

A file exported before precise permissions

A file exported when one permission covered a whole module (for instance “Records & fines › Edit”) still imports: each former generic permission of a rank becomes all the precise permissions it covered. Imported ranks keep exactly their rights; you only have to fine-tune them. See Permissions.