Thoughts before Standard Mode go live

[andrewvanbreda]

Hi @sacrevert,

I have tested Plant Portal Standard Mode, I think it is good enough for people to use now.

However I have some questions before we do that. I am not sure where some of these things am about to mention came from, they might of even come from notes I made during conversations, or some requests might be more formal.

1. A request from ages ago which wasn't done

'Call Spatial Reference System "Country Grid" in NPMS mode' Do we still want this, and do we want this for Standard Mode?

2. Move Bare soil, Bare rock, Litter, Mosses & Lichens to Species Tab and should be affected by the Abundance Type. Will need more detail if this element to be implemented, although I do have a note saying this isn't needed for go live.

3. Add Number Of Samples to List Squares/List Plots pages. Also add "Years sampled" (number of distinct years we have samples for).

I have this note, do we still want this? Is this NPMS or Standard Mode? or both?

4. I noticed this when setting up Data Entry. The filter is setup as this on data entry (same as NPMS)

clubmoss conifer fern horsetail flowering plant ginkgo quillwort stonewort algae moss liverwort hornwort lichen fungi

However I notice that the live Warehouse has 3 taxon groups for lichen: "Lichens", "lichen", "Lichen".

I am not sure if these are even all in use. Does anyone know why there might be 3?

If they are all in use, then the obvious answer might be to add all of these to the species filter on the data entry page. If that is the case, I assume that is an adjustment you would me to also make to NPMS?

5. I have this note 'Add "none" option to Grazing (ordinal)'

Do you still want this? Is that the Grazing Intensity drop-down? If you want this, I will create a new attribute/termlist because the current one is shared with NPMS which doesn't have that options.

6. There appears to be a problem with Indicia that is currently preventing auto switching to the UTM grid system for Channel Islands, I am sure this used to work and has crept in an iForm update. I will investigate and fix that. I will assume it isn't needed for live because NPMS is doing it, and no-one has complained about that. I think it is a general problem, not specific to NPMS/Plant Portal.

[andrewvanbreda]

Another item

7. At some point I made this note about the plot page.

" Additional Grid Ref 1 (basic character validation) Additional Grid Ref 2. Two spatial reference boxes of plots (basic character validation) And description box which allows user to enter “South west corner” (50 chars) Not needed for live"

Do we still need these? as I think you already checked the Add/Edit Plot page and it was ok. I guess the "Description" box could be covered by the Comment box at the bottom.

[sacrevert]

Thanks Andy, responses here:

1. I think "Spatial Reference System" is fine for both modes
2. Not needed for go live -- not sure whether generally needed. Can you create a new issue for this and I can worry about it later?
3. I think we want this only for Standard Mode for the moment. Probably don't want NPMS mode to diverge from NPMS website too much.
4. Don't worry about this. Lichens are a mess in UKSI anyway, and I can;t believe these extra "groups" would make any difference to what is available
5. I think you can ignore this. It would have been useful to make people state this specifically (as opposed to just not selecting a grazing level), but I think we have to trade this off with the undesirability of having yet anothe term list, and one that is different to NPMS. So, just ignore this please.
6. Would be useful to fix this generally so that NPMS gets updated too. We do have one or two surveyors on the Channel Islands, and, whilst they would probably notice this issue and manually select the correct SRS, it would be good to have it fixed.
7. I think just leave this for the moment.

[andrewvanbreda]

Point 2: https://github.com/BiologicalRecordsCentre/plantportal/issues/94 created

[sacrevert]

@andrewvanbreda I think that when (6) above is fixed, then you can close this. I have marked this issue as for "info" in case we do want to address any of these in the future, but I don't think it needs to stay open

[andrewvanbreda]

Hi @sacrevert I have fixed point 6 for both Plant Portal and NPMS. Previously when clicking for a plot and the spatial reference system was invalid for the area (such as British National Grid on Channel Isands) it would throw an error.

Now it will auto-switch to a valid system.

However I am not sure it still does what you want, you will need to clarify. (I don't think it ever did this by the way). For example clicking on channel islands when Britsh National Grid will switch to WGS84. This is default Indicia behaviour. Do you want it to always switch to UTM for that area?

Also I noticed in Ireland I think some of the British National Grid references are still valid in Ireland. This means it won't switch to Irish Grid for those squares. Do you want it to always auto-switch to Irish Grid and UTM for those areas? It does switch to Irish Grid if the British National Grid isn't valid for the click point.

If you want these enhancements I would change it on the NPMS timesheet.

[sacrevert]

hi @andrewvanbreda I don't think that it is worth changing the Channel Islands thing, as we only have a couple of square, both with established plots, so it would have almost no impact on the NPMS surveys in that area anyway.

I'm surprised to hear about the behaviour in Ireland where the UK grid is still valid, as I would have thought that this would have been changed long ago for iRecord. Is this really still an issue across indicia? to answer that question, yes, we should have it so that if a user clicks with the Irish coast, the Irish grid is defaulted to, regardless of the British National Grid extent, I just find it strange that this is still an issue at this point in time relative to indicia development. I'm happy to charge this latter item to the NPMS timesheet, I just want to confirm that it is truly an outstanding issue with respect to indicia code (ping @DavidRoy @johnvanbreda )

[andrewvanbreda]

Hi @sacrevert The default Indicia behaviour is to switch from British National Grid to WGS84 for Channel Islands, but as you say we can leave that.

I think I can see the confusion regarding Ireland. It appears on iRecord that it does different things depending on typing and clicking I hadn't realised. So clicking does always switch to Irish Grid. However typing in a British National Grid reference such as NW363501 does not cause a switch and stays as British National Grid. Plant Portal Standard Mode does the same. This would explain the confusion. Interesting Plant Portal NPMS mode does not seem to do this and does the swap on typing as well. The main NPMS website yet again does something different as that site pads the plot Grid Ref with 0s. I noticed a bug with this just now. If padding is required it switches the system drop-down to Irish Grid, but then adds the padding to the British Grid Reference. I will deal with that. I do not think it can be happening often. I don't think anyone would of saved any incorrect data because they would be warned the Grid Reference was invalid if that situation did happen.

So I think unless you decided the typing behaviour I just mentioned was wrong in Indicia, I think that NPMS bug is probably the only thing that needs fixing as low priority

[sacrevert]

Cheers @andrewvanbreda I think that's ok. I can see that there might be occasional issues with people mistyping a British grid ref and it ending up in Ireland, but then this could also happen with the ocean. I don't think this needs to be fixed from NPMS or Plant Portal budget, I would say that this is a core indicia issue that should be considered there as and when.