Hi all, have now discovered that if logged on to PC as administrator, it works, and I know there is a thread on here somewhere about that, so I will go away and study it before posting further requests....
Logging on to PC as me, cannot import from an excel file either.....

didn't have chance to try that one last week for various reasons.

Louise Bacon
CPBRC

Good Morning there,

Quick question: are you using a standalone version or server?

The permission minefield regarding permissions is well documented through this site ( just do a search for 'permissions' and you'll see what I mean). We've noticed this problem & have temporarily resolved it by simply having the system manager (ie me) do all imports. As there have been a number of key concerns with common name/nameserver/dictionary by having one person do all import produces some consistency. I have a number of talented data-entry volunteers who are becoming increasingly proficient at creating/cleaning excel sheets in particular.

As to why this is the case, I can only surmise that admin rights contain some more elaborate read/write/create permissions with whichever version of server you are using.

Cheers now, Rob.

Hi Ian

The new system in Recorder 6 allows you to import more than one observer, but this does has the disadvantage of
causing problems when you have the old-style "Joe and Enid Bloggs".In Recorder 6 the import wizard was designed to interpret "and" as a separator used for different observers, therefore this would be considered to be expected behaviour, i.e. "Joe and Enid Bloggs" would be interpreted as "Joe" and "Enid Bloggs". In order to import both Joe and Enid Bloggs are separate individuals with full names, you would have to list them as "Joe Bloggs and Enid Bloggs" in the import file.

Similarly, for sex/stage matching, there is a whole new parsing system where you can no longer have a separate Abundance and Qualifier column - the data and the qualifier must appear in the same column in the import file. The following are some explanations of how Recorder interprets the text you have tried to use.

"1st winter" - R6 will interpret this as a measurement with a value of "1st" and a qualifier of "winter".

"1st-winter" - R6 interprets this with a value of "1st-" and a qualifier of "winter"

"First Winter" - R6 will interpret this with a value of "First" and a qualifier of "Winter".

To correctly import "1st Winter", first type in "1st Winter" as a measurement qualifier using Tools - Terms List - Measurement Type - Abundance - Mesurement Qualifier. Then in your import spreadsheet in the abundance column express it like so:

1 FirstWinter

Charles Roper has kindly provided a spreadsheet with some examples which I will post on the uploads page (the data contained within the spreadsheet isn't actual data and has been made up just to illustrate the example). The last 2 rows demonstrate the methods you can use to import this data.

Hope this helps!

Thanks Charles!

Best wishes,

Sarah

Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC

Sarah, you can zip the files and add them like that.

Update: I've just enabled uploading of spreadsheets too.

Hi Sarah and Charles

Thanks for sending the spreadsheet for me to see. Its contents trouble me, more than a little. I enter all my data via spreadsheets, importing the contents to R6. With the 'sex/stage' separate from the 'abundance' it is easy to edit any errors by altering the qualifier entry and copying down (having sorted on that column). Now, if abundance and qualifier are mixed, there are many more options and editting/checking prior to import will be a far harder job. Why is this change thought to be an improvement? I can see no advantages, but lots of disadvantages.

Also, what happens to the qualifiers that were in Recorder anyway, like 'Adult female' and 'Adult male'. What happens to the space with those (I have not been able to test it yet)?

I have just looked at the data I have imported to R6 and found that for every record I have imported there is no figure for abundance - the measurement tab is blank. This means that the change to the method of import has had a huge effect and there was no warning on any of the paperwork that came with R6. I am horrified. Hours of work has been wasted and I will have to delete many records and reimport. What on earth is going on? The import process shows the abundance and qualifier fields, as before, with no error message and all along it has not been importing either. I can't believe it.

How can I get the abundance and any qualifier to show?
Why does the import data process not say that the abundance and data have to be mixed for them to be recorded (even though this is a very bad idea)?
I have my job as a recorder to do, and Recorder only seems to make the job more difficult than it has to be. I feel in utter despair.

Help....! Ian

Hi Ian,

There are several advantages to the new system. As Sarah has pointed out, it is more efficient to have a combined abundance column. Furthermore, it is more efficient once the data are imported because, instead of importing one occurrence for each abundance type, Recorder now imports just one occurrence and includes multiple abundance types within that. This is how the data should be stored within Recorder; the old import wizard failed to make use of this ability to store multiple abundances against an occurrence and instead rather clumsily created multiple occurrences where one would have been preferable.

Another advantage is flexibility and ease of typing. For example, instead of typing 1 male; 2 female, you could instead type 1m 2f, which is much quicker and less prone to error. At the abundance qualifier matching stage, Recorder will ask you what you meant by "m" and "f" and at this stage you can match it to the Male and Female qualifiers that exist in the database already. What's more, Recorder will remember your choices, so that you don't have to specify them every time. The same goes for things like AdultFemale - because Recorder can't find "AdultFemale" in its database, it will ask you what you meant by that. You can then match "AdultFemale" to the "Adult Female" (with space) that already exists in the database and Recorder will remember that choice for next time. It's a system that works really well once you've tried it a few times.

In addition, you can have one abundance type per column. Have a look at Sheet2 in the TestImport spreadsheet for an example of this. You can also mix and match these styles, so you could have separate columns for the more common abundance types, then have a combined column for more unusual ones.

I feel your pain with the changes, though. I have always wished that backward compatibility had been maintained as our simple data entry tool (Species Recorder) relied on the old style abundances, even though doing it the old way is far from ideal. As I understand it, though, the new import wizard was a complete redesign from the ground up done by Dorset Software, rather than an upgrade or progression of the old wizard, which was built by Stuart Ball (I think), thus although they look and act in similar ways, they are, for better or worse, completely different beasts. Having said all that, it turned out to be very easy to fix what was broken in the spreadsheets generated by Species Recorder and so all is now well here at least.

But you have highlighted a very important issue regarding backward compatibility: it's important to maintain it where possible and where is has to be broken, users should be given plenty of advanced warning and consulted on the changes, otherwise processes and tools that have been developed over time will just keep getting broken, which is not only annoying but also can be very expensive!

Charles

Hi Ian, the changes to the import wizard are in there at the request of many users. People have asked again and again (myself included) for the ability to import multiple abundances for each occurrence and also the ability to import multiple Recorders; the fact is that it is much more efficient in terms of data entry and data storage to be able to express multiple abundances in one row of a spreadsheet rather than repeating a whole record (row) multiple times. I was, however, disappointed that backward compatibility was broken when the new import wizard appeared as it can be very difficult to transition to a new way of doing things, even if the new way is an 'improvement'. But software changes and improves (and sometimes regresses) and so I cannot emphasise enough how important it is to test software before committing to it and using it in a 'live' situation. Always, always, do some small test imports when you get a new version of Recorder. I tested Recorder 6 for about 6 months before committing to it, so pretty much all of the changes, bumps and issues were fully ironed out before we made the switch to make it our live database.

Did you have a look at the alternative way of expressing abundances in sheet2 of the testimport spreadsheet? Would this be useful to you?

The question as to whether R6 is a good program for single taxon recorders is a tricky one. As you are aware, different recorders are fastidious in how they record, and different groups tend to have their own requirements too. The end results is that Recorder tries to be so many things to so many people and thus end up being rather complex and unwieldy (although it has improved immensely in the 3 years I've been using it). Creating software that is both robust and flexible enough for scientists while at the same time is also easy and loose enough to be used by non-scientists is incredibly difficult. I tend to find, working in a record centre as I do, that having multiple taxon groups to deal with makes life more complex, not less. So it's actually much easier if all you're dealing with is one group. Ultimately, thought, I do feel that Recorder isn't a 'light' piece of software - it takes a large investment in time and energy to get the best out of it. Given that investment, one can get a huge amount from it; much more so than any other similar system. As with all things it has its strengths and weaknesses, but unfortunately its strengths can often only be realised by the truly dedicated or those with plenty of help from their reseller. We here wouldn't have been able to use Recorder in the way we use it if it weren't for the phenomenal amount of help we've received from Mike Weideli and Sally Rankin.

Answers to the problems are difficult. Software alone is not the answer, although projects like Recorder Web may go a some way to alleviating some of the problems: being able to deliver tailored recording solutions to recorders, with the only requirement being a web browser and an internet connection is fairly compelling. No one piece of software is going to be ideal for everyone. The best thing to do is to get involved in the community and make your voice heard (as have have been doing). It is only with plenty of feedback that Recorder can improve.

Charles