1 Topic by Alan Hale

  • Alan Hale
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  • From: Aberystwyth, Wales
  • Registered: 11-05-2006
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Topic: "Recorder", "Recorder Name" and "Record Entered By"

I expect this has come up on may occasions, but it seems to me that the distinction between the person making a biological record and the person entering that record hasn't been fully established in Indicia. It's an important distinction - they may be the same person, or they may not.

The confusion seems to be exacerbated by the use of the terms "Recorder" and "Recorder Name". For example, in iRecorder, I've just entered a record made by Sam Bosanquet. In the data entry form I've put Sam as the Recorder Name. But if I then go to Explore under the grid column headed "Recorder" my name appears. If I then go to Record Details, my name appears under "Recorder" and Sam's name under "Recorder Name".

Would it not be more helpful to have instead of "Recorder" this field/column named "Record Entered By" or similar?

Cheers

Alan

Alan Hale
Aberystwyth

Alan Hale's Website

2 Reply by johnvanbreda

  • johnvanbreda
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Re: "Recorder", "Recorder Name" and "Record Entered By"

Hi Alan
Indicia doesn't really enforce any particular behaviour regarding a record and the people you associate with it, other than when Easy Login is enabled it will associate the record to the person who did the input. But you are right, in iRecord the Recorder field should take precedence over the person who input it in the reports - I'll take a look in a moment as I've recently done some bug fixing on this area and may have introduced an issue :(

Cheers
John

John van Breda
Biodiverse IT

johnvanbreda's Website

3 Reply by johnvanbreda

  • johnvanbreda
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Re: "Recorder", "Recorder Name" and "Record Entered By"

That's sorted now, thanks Alan.
John

John van Breda
Biodiverse IT

johnvanbreda's Website

4 Reply by Jim Bacon

  • Jim Bacon
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Re: "Recorder", "Recorder Name" and "Record Entered By"

Hi Alan

A general comment from me.

I think the Warehouse database makes a fair job of distinguishing recorder and data enterer in that there is a recorder_names field and a created_by field for every sample and they have always existed.

However, it was difficult to use the created_by field until the advent of the User Identifier service (and the Easy Login module) as the field stores a warehouse user id. Also a single text field for recorder_name does not always meet the needs of surveys. Various workarounds using sample attributes were used by different surveys. This then presents a challenge to iRecord in particular as it tries to bring together samples that have been submitted by many surveys.

You are absolutely right that iRecord could employ different terminology which might improve clarity but, in general, it is down to the website designer to choose the language that appears on the site. So there is no need for your website to apear the same as iRecord. In any event, it seems, the output was not as John intended and he has fixed this.

Jim Bacon

5 Reply by Alan Hale

  • Alan Hale
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  • From: Aberystwyth, Wales
  • Registered: 11-05-2006
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Re: "Recorder", "Recorder Name" and "Record Entered By"

Thanks John for making those changes on iRecord and Jim for that further comment.

Yes, I realise I conflated two somewhat separate issues here and that on my own website I'm free to decide on my own terminology.

This was the first time I'd looked at iRecord by the way and I must say I'm really impressed.

Cheers

Alan

Alan Hale
Aberystwyth

Alan Hale's Website