Tutorial - Data Entry Tips

Data entry in iRecord is designed to be as quick and intuitive as possible. However, in this tutorial we’ll take a look at a few tips and tricks which can make things even easier. As usual, make sure you are in training mode before inputting tutorial records.

First, select Record > Enter a list of records from the menu to access the standard form for entering record lists.

Control locking

We are going to input records given to us by a friend, from 2 different places, but on the same day. Click on the Date control and set a date for your records to 14/04/2013. Now, click the padlock icon to the right of the date box. This locks the control’s value so that it cannot be edited.

The locked date input control.

You can see that the date control is now greyed out and the padlock locked, indicating that the control value cannot be changed. Try clicking on the date control and you will see that it no longer accepts input. The real value of control locking is the control’s value will be remembered the next time you use this form. So, we can use this facility when we need to input several batches of records which share some of the same attributes such as the date, place or recorder.

Type “Fred Blogs” into the Recorder Name and lock this control as well, since we are entering more than one batch of records on Fred’s behalf.

Inputing lists of species

Next, click in the input box at the top of the Species column in the grid below.

Tip

Don’t forget that you can use the tab key to navigate forwards in the form - this is a standard feature of web browsers. Shift tab allows you to navigate backwards.

Fred has given us a list of birds plus a list of plants for the first place & date he surveyed. This is the list as he wrote it:

  • Lords and ladies
  • Dog violet
  • Greater-Spotted Woodpecker
  • Parus caeruleus
  • Magpie

Let’s start inputting the names. We’re going to explore a few of the different issues relating to finding species names - with a clear understanding of how it works you’ll be able to find names quickly and efficiently. So we’ll be deliberately looking at some problematic data in order to learn how to handle it. Type “lords and” into the species name box. Your search is sent to the server and used to lookup possible species name matches as follows:

The locked date input control

This is an interesting (i.e. deliberately chosen) example. 3 results are shown, but they are all for Arum maculatum, i.e. Lords-and-ladies or cuckoo pint. The reason is that iRecord uses the UK Species Index to provide species names and the UKSI lists 3 variants of the common name Lords-and-ladies with different capitalisation. Another interesting point here is that there are hyphens in the common names listed and the names were found even though we didn’t include the hyphen in the characters we typed.

Tip

iRecord doesn’t care about punctuation and other special characters when you search for a species name, so don’t bother typing them. In fact, spaces are also ignored - typing “7sp” is enough to find “7-spot ladybird” and would also find 7 spot ladybird if it were listed without the hyphen.

Rather than pick a name, we’ll explore inputting this species name a little further so select the text you have input so far and delete it. Now, type “armac” which is 2 letters from the genus name and 3 letters from the species name. This should find the species for us as iRecord supports 2+3 letter abbreviations as used in some other recording systems. However, as there are quite a few species with the same abbreviation, Arum maculatum does not make it to the top. One way around this is to limit the search to flowering plants, which is particularly useful if entering a list of many flowering plant records.

Tip

When using 2 + 3 letter species name abbreviations, utilise the filter button in the Species column header to limit your search to the appropriate species group(s). This works even more effectivel when entering species from a not-so-extensive group as flowering plants.

To change the species names filter, click the filter button in the column header of the Species column. This pops up a dialog box allowing you to configure what names are available in the search filter. Select the option Input species from the following species group then in the associated drop down box choose flowering plant.

The species names filter dialog

Click Apply. Now, clear the species name input box and type “armac” again. This time you will find that Arum maculatum appears in the list a couple of places from the top. Use the down arrow key to move the highlighted name down, then hit the return key to select it.

The species name is selected and a new row is automatically added to the grid. Note that the input cursor is put straight into the new box in the Species column ready for you to continue typing species names. Let’s try the next name in the list, written as “Dog violet”. Type this name in. Nothing is found - you can tell this because the rotating “searching icon” appears briefly and then disappears, indicating nothing was found. One thing to bear in mind about using the UK Species Index to lookup species names is it does not understand the vagaries of the ways that we often share names. There are actually many dog violet species; we happen to know that Fred meant common dog violet, because we know Fred would have specified if it were something different. But iRecord can’t make these assumptions for you. If you can’t find a species name because you know that there is a part of the name missing, then insert a * character as appropriate to act as a wildcard. Insert a * at the start of the species name input so you are searching for * dog violet and you will find that a number of dog violet species are returned with common a little way down the list. Select it and we’ll move on.

Now that we’ve input the plants from the list, click the filter button again and this time set the filter to “Birds” and click Apply.

Since we know that iRecord does not care about capitalisation, spaces, or punctuation, type “greaterspottedwood” into the next Species search box. Again, the name is not found (I did say we’d be deliberately looking for problems to learn how to handle them!). You might have noticed that we are searching for “Greater” instead of “Great”, but assuming that we hadn’t spotted this problem in the name we’ve input, a good way forward would be to search for something like “great*woodpecker”, since we know that at least these parts of the name are unambiguous.

Tip

The * character is your friend when struggling to find a species name.

Fred has given us a latin name for the next species to input, Parus caeruleus. Input this name and, you’ve guessed by now, the name will not be found. This is because P. caeruleus is the name used for blue tit until a few years ago, when taxonomists realised it was not actually in the same genus as Parus major, the great tit. So, now it is known by the new name Cyanistes caeruleus, though the previously used synonym is sometimes still in use. We don’t want to look up the correct name to use every time this happens, so another option is to enable searching for synonyms. To do this, click the filter button in the Species column header again. This time, change the drop down option for Choose species names available for selection to All names including common names and synonyms. In other words, all the names available in the UK Species Index become available for searching, whether they are current or not. Now retype “Parus caeruleus” and you should find that this time, the name is found.

As one more illustration of grid based name input, let’s try inputting a few dragonfly and damselfy names to examine the most efficient key strokes. The list we will input is:

  • Beautiful agrion - Calopteryx virgo
  • Common Darter - Sympetrum striolatum
  • White-Legged Damselfly - Platycnemis pennipes

Clear the species names you have input so far, and try the following key strokes as quickly as you can:

cavir<return>systr<return>plpen<return>

If you are a quick typist, you will notice that iRecord lets you start typing the species name for the next row before it has looked up the first row’s name. You don’t have to wait for the species name to be matched, just get on with typing names as fast as you like. This works for common names and latin names as well as abbreviations, though you are obviously more restricted in the speed you can reach. For the last abbreviation, “plpen”, iRecord could not find a unique species name match so the drop down list of possible matches is shown. At this point you have to break your flow to click on the correct name.

Now, try the same experiment again, but type the following set of characters. Note the missing p in “plpen” which is our pretend typo.

cavir<return>systr<return>plen<return>

This time, if you managed to press return before the search completed for the misspelt “plen”, then you will notice with a “polite shake of the head” the species name input box informs you that it failed to find any matches. Time to go back and correct it!

Tip

Practice using the keyboard only to input species and associated attributes into the input grid. In time it will become intuitive and is faster than using the mouse.

One more thing, try typing “cavir” into the species search box then pressing <tab> instead of <return>. This time, the species name is picked but the input focus moves to the next control in the same row. You can then use the up or down arrow and return key to change the certainty of the record, or press tab again to change one of the other column values. Press tab a few times to move to the next row when ready to add a new species name, or shift tab to move backwards. When you are in a text input box (such as Quantity, Identified By or Comment you can use the up and down arrows to navigate between rows, though the web browser reserves these keystrokes for selecting items when the focused control is a drop down.

Tip

Don’t forget to use the record certainty attribute to mark up records which you are not certain of the identification for. Also, note that if you are not certain of an identification to species level, but are certain of the genus you can always add a record at genus level.

Uploading photos

The ability to attach up to 4 photos to each record added via the grid is accessed via the add images link in the rightmost column of the grid. It’s simply a matter of picking an image file from your disk to upload.

The file upload system used by iRecord examines the capabilities of your web browser to determine the best way to upload files. For example, if you are using a modern web browser with support for the latest standards, then it can resize the image so that the upload time is fast and show a progress bar for the upload. If you are running an old browser which does not support the latest web standards, then it will do a standard file upload which will be slow. If you are uploading multiple images for a batch of records, then a slow upload speed could become completely unworkable quite quickly. The file upload system will also make use of installed browser plugins, as either Silverlight or Flash can make a smoother upload process. The morale of the story is, if you have any difficulties using the photo upload facility, then I recommend ensuring you are using the latest available version of your web browser and have the latest versions installed of your Silverlight or Flash plugins.

The photo upload facility

Map tips

Watch the video below which shows you through some tips and tricks for using the map. Then follow the steps below to have a go yourself.

Here are a collection of tips and tricks for using iRecord’s map during data input. Try each tip out using the Record > Enter a list of records page.

Map Layers

In case you haven’t already spotted it, try clicking on the blue + button in the top right of the map. This expands a panel allowing you to choose from the various layers available. On the following screenshot, the first 2 are background layers provided by Google - you can show only one of these at a time. The second 2 are overlays which are drawn over the top of the base layer. You can show any combination of these you like.

The map layers panel

Try changing the settings to see what they do. When you’ve finished, click the - button in the panel to close it.

Setting a grid reference for your record

The simplest way to set a grid reference for your record is to click once on the map where you would like the record to be. Most of the time this is all there is you need to know. The following points give you some extra details though:

  1. As you hover over the map, a “ghost” image of the grid square you are about to pick is shown. This gives you a preview of the square size and position.
  2. The more you zoom the map in, the more precise the grid reference will be. The map won’t set a grid reference that is more accurate than could realistically be expected from the scale of the map.
  3. When you click to set a grid reference, the map will zoom into the grid reference square giving you a chance to click again to set an even more precise grid reference.
  4. If the map is showing the street map base layer, then when you click on the map to set a grid reference and it automatically zooms in, if the zoom scale is high enough the map will automatically switch to satellite view so you can set a precise grid reference more easily.
  5. If you hold down the + key whilst over the map, the precision of the grid reference is increased

An exercise

To check you’ve got to grips with the map, see if you can:

  1. use the map to set a grid reference for a 1m square on the top of the lighthouse just off Beachy Head, just to the west of Eastbourne.
  2. Input the following coordinate from a GPS: 51.53865N 0.01659W
  3. Input the following tetrad (2km) grid reference: TR01Y. Use the streets background layer to find out where this is.