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Re: Consolidaton of Recorder 6

JNCC are aware that recently the Recorder project has not received the level of input required. This has been due to not having enough staff time available compared with other internal priorities, accentuated by staff turn over. Fundamentally, we recognise that while Recorder 6 is rich in functionality it is still not a polished product which has been causing considerable, and understandable, frustration across the user community. We now intend to have a focused period of work to address this.

Our next steps are to create a firm plan and attempt to ring fence the internal staff time required to address the current problems. The plan will cover:
- complete testing of version 6.8 and release
- review the help for the package and update
- if necessary develop any additional getting started guides that are required
- consolidate the species dictionary and other term lists across 2002, 6.6 and 6.7
- establish a reliable process for the publication of updates to the species dictionary
- review the current add-ins and ensure they work with the most recent version of Recorder
- consolidate the web resources relating to Recorder
- review the market and develop a longer term plan for the onward development and support for the package

Clearly the summer is not the ideal time to drive this forward as the work will be hampered by annual leave. However, we hope to have the plan published within the next couple of weeks and will be aiming to release V6.8 of Recorder by the end of August. Sarah Shaw, a new member of staff here at JNCC with primary responsibility for the Recorder project, will be leading both the creation, publication and reporting progress against this plan. We intend to publish progress reports every one or two weeks.

Thank you for your patience and support

Steve Wilkinson

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Re: Consolidaton of Recorder 6

Thanks for the update on the Recorder project Steve and welcome, Sarah.

Thanks for the offer to publish the progress reports. This topic,

   "review the market and develop a longer term plan for the onward development and support for the package"

will be eagerly awaited I think.  Will you be posting progress on this forum?


Regards,

Dave Cope,
Biodiversity Technology Officer,
Biodiversity Information Service for Powys and Brecon Beacons National Park.

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Re: Consolidaton of Recorder 6

Dave
Our intention is to use this forum to both publish the plan and progress against it. Should get the first part of this up next week.
Steve

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Re: Consolidaton of Recorder 6

Yes, I forgot to post to say thanks for the update. I think the great benefit of a forum such as this is that it allows us, the users, to help infom and shape the long-term plan.

Charles Roper
Digital Development Manager | Field Studies Council
http://www.field-studies-council.org | https://twitter.com/charlesroper | https://twitter.com/fsc_digital

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Re: Consolidaton of Recorder 6

Following Steve's announcement on the consolidation of Recorder 6 I have provided an initial outline of the Recorder 6 development plan - please see the uploads page on the forum:

http://forums.nbn.org.uk/uploads.php

As explained in the document the comments section will be used to update users on our progress.

I am also compiling a list of suggested improvements to the Getting Started Guide, Online Help and other aspects of Recorder 6 documentation, as well as your thoughts on providing additional tutorials. Please see the following thread for further details and feel free to add your comments:

http://forums.nbn.org.uk/viewtopic.php?id=78

Thank you again for your suggestions and support,

Kind Regards,

Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC

Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC

6

Re: Consolidaton of Recorder 6

The first update to the 'Outline of Recorder 6 Development Plan' has been provided on the uploads page, please see:

http://forums.nbn.org.uk/uploads.php

Following consultation with Dorset Software we are hoping to release a full version of 6.9 by mid September, instead of releasing V6.8 as an upgrade only. Details of this have been provided in the document above.

This approach is considered to be most efficient way of getting all of the proposed improvements out to users and is estimated to delay the next release by only 2 weeks. I apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

As you will see from the updated plan we are making good progress so far and hope to continue to do so.

I will shortly provide a draft list on the uploads page of all the suggestions I have been collating to improve the Getting Started Guide, Online Help and Recorder 6 documentation.

Please watch this space and thank you to everyone for your suggestions so far,

Regards,

Sarah

Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC

Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC

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Re: Consolidaton of Recorder 6

For info:

The draft document of suggested improvements to the Getting Started Guide, Online Help and other Recorder 6 documentation is now available via the uploads page, please see

"Suggested improvements 10 Aug 06" at http://forums.nbn.org.uk/uploads.php

Many thanks,

Sarah

Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC

Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC

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Re: Consolidaton of Recorder 6

Sarah,

I sent a copy of our user manual to interested parties back in July, would you like to see a copy yourself?

if so mail me your address & I'll reply with it, ok?

cheers now, Rob.

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Re: Consolidaton of Recorder 6

Changes to Release Schedule/Recorder 6 Development Plan Update

Please find a further update to the Recorder 6 Development Plan and the 'Suggested Improvements' document available on the file uploads page at http://forums.nbn.org.uk/uploads.php

Following testing of V6.9.1 Dorset Software has provided fixes for a number of bugs identified and produced version 6.9.2.

We plan to make a beta copy of V6.9.2 (upgrade only) available to the user community via the forum. Users can then upgrade their current version of Recorder 6 to V6.9.2 and test this new version if they wish. Any bugs encountered in V6.9.2 can then be reported to JNCC or on the Recorder forum until the end of September. These bugs will then be fixed in a subsequent release scheduled for mid October (dependent on the number of bugs found).

We would like the release in October to be as stable as possible and would encourage users to report any bugs found as soon as they can.

We hope to provide more details and a beta copy V6.9.2 (as a download) by the end of the week (Friday 15th September).

Thank you again for your assistance,

Best Wishes,

Sarah

Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC

Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC

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Re: Consolidaton of Recorder 6

In response to an item in the above document (the last one under "Online Help").
The Tools|Options only presents a limited number of "Available Actions", one of which is the standard Help button.
No matter how good this Help file becomes (and it's looking as though we are going to see some wonderful improvements soon), individuals and Local Records Centres will wish to provide guidance to themselves and staff about the precise way in which Recorder should be used to ensure that services can be delivered properly. In other words there needs to be access to a set of "Procedures". Each LRC has their own set of procedures and Recorder is capable of being configured to provide a range of these, XMLs written in-house, instructions on the use of Measurements for different kinds of Location (e.g. Hedgerows, trees) and so on.
I happen to have an HTML Help compiler (RoboHelp) and can place these kinds of procedures into a "Recorder Guide"; others may have their own documents, intranet or links to website that they use to provide guidance notes to themselves or staff.  At the moment my guide is via a link on everyone's task bar, far better to have it within Recorder. The solution appears to be a user-configurable item in this "Available Actions". We would need to be able to add to this list and assign a "macro" (just like the "Target" you see when you examine the properties of a Windows shortcut) and an icon and then be able to add this item to the toolbar.
Voila!

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Re: Consolidaton of Recorder 6

If such a 'user help' function were to be developed, I think it would be useful to implement it as a generic 'launch external application' function which could be bound to custom icons and added to the toolbar or to a menu. Then we could add icons or menu entries to external help files (chm) or links to the wiki, or Word docs or PDFs etc. Re-reading your post, I think this is what you're suggesting too. One question though: is integrating this into Recorder really that necessary at present? Wouldn't creating a link on the desktop, start menu or similar suffice?

Charles

Charles Roper
Digital Development Manager | Field Studies Council
http://www.field-studies-council.org | https://twitter.com/charlesroper | https://twitter.com/fsc_digital

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Re: Consolidaton of Recorder 6

Hi

Can someone confirm whether the upcoming release (6.9.3 in the latest info) wil be a complete version - ie CD with everything included & no additional upgrading required. I have been under the impression that 6.8/6.9 would be, but am now uncertain how I came to that conclusion.

Gordon

Gordon Barker
Biological Survey Data Manager
National Trust

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Re: Consolidaton of Recorder 6

Well, Charles, what you say is true for the likes of you and me who know where to look for stuff and how to put links on people's desktops and the like but in reality many users ignore stuff or fiddle with their desktops and destroy links and without our continued surveillance these things would soon get ignored. Bung it into the application and there's less excuse.
P.S. "Target" could be bunged onto the Options|File Locations tab or next to it. System manager only, of course.

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Re: Consolidaton of Recorder 6

Oh, and I've got 12 PCs with hot desking of up to 12 people, meaning I've 144 desktops to maintain.

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Re: Consolidaton of Recorder 6

Hi Gordon

Just to confirm...

We are going to provide a beta copy of V6.9.2 on the forum - for people to test as an upgrade only.

The subsequent release (due early October) will be a full release with standalone and network installation CD's available.

Hope this makes things abit clearer :)

Kind regards,

Sarah

Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC

Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC

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Re: Consolidaton of Recorder 6

Dear Darwyn/Charles

I am still keeping a list of all the requests, even if they haven't been prioritised in the "Suggested Improvements" document. Thinking aloud, this suggestion would be better housed under a document such as 'suggested improvements to the program" a list I am maintaining (behind the scenes so to speak) in addition to the document provided on the forum.

I think it is a useful suggestion and I'm sure that quite a few users will have their own documents etc. that they could use such an option for, and could run these more easily alongside Recorder if this was developed.

Still something to consider in the future.

Kind regards,

Sarah

Sarah Shaw
Biodiversity Information Assistant
JNCC