When you publish your data to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) registry, a dataset is created. The IATI standard mentions two types of files- Activity file and Organisation file. Hence, there are two types of datasets: Activity dataset and Organisation dataset. [Organisations can either segment or segment their activity dataset]
First, let’s understand the “AUTOMATICALLY UPDATE IATI REGISTRY WHEN CREATING XML FILES DURING PUBLISHING?” option in Publishing Settings under Settings.
If the AUTOMATICALLY UPDATE IATI REGISTRY WHEN CREATING XML FILES DURING PUBLISHING? is set to ‘No’
This option is set to ‘No’ by default when an organisation signs up on AidStream. It is mainly for first time users who have never published to the IATI Registry using AidStream. When activity(s) is published with this setting, an XML file gets generated for the activity(s). The data does not get published to the Registry. However, it can be published to the Registry manually. See section “Publishing to IATI Registry from Datasets”.
After an activity is published, a ‘Published’ tag appears beside the title. It means that the activity has been published locally on AidStream — in the activity dataset. The dataset can be found under ‘Datasets’ tab and
The purpose of this is to ensure data is published correctly. While the activities are published locally only, you can analyse dataset as well as visualise data from the dashboard.
If the AUTOMATICALLY UPDATE IATI REGISTRY WHEN CREATING XML FILES DURING PUBLISHING? is set to ‘Yes’
With these settings, activity(s) get automatically published to the IATI Registry.
After the completion of the publishing process, ‘Published on IATI’ tag appears beside the activity. If you hover over the ‘Published on IATI’ tag, you will find the location of the file in the IATI registry.
However, after the settings have been changed to ‘Yes’ and activities has been published to the Registry, it cannot be changed back to ‘No’.
Publishing to IATI Registry from Datasets
Activities (or Organisation) data can be published from the Datasets too. Follow these steps to publish your activities from the Dataset:
- Hover your cursor on the ‘User icon’ at the top right of the page. A dropdown menu will appear. Click on ‘Datasets’.
- You will be directed to Datasets page.
- Click on ‘ACTIVITY DATASET’ tab.
- Click on the ‘Publish Activities to IATI’ button at the right side of the page.
- Your dataset (with all your activities) will be published to the IATI Registry instantly.
TLDR:
On AidStream, you can publish your activity locally or automatically update it in the IATI registry.
If the automatic update setting is selected as ‘NO’, the activity gets built on that data platform only. It won’t be available on the registry even if the tag shows ‘Published’. [You will have to go to the datasets tab and publish to IATI from there]
If the automatic update setting is selected as ‘YES’, the activity is published to the IATI registry automatically. [You won’t have to go to the datasets tab each time you want to publish on IATI]