Collection Object Maintenance

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1

Hi Team,
We are planning to move our Mycology collections data to Specify. Could you please assist, which fields or table can we potentially use for “Collection Object Maintenance” data, that will enable us to query “Maintenance History” of the specimen. Similar to the Determination table which stores all “Dets.” history.
Use Case Example:
Text field (= “Activity Type”) - formatted into a picklist
Date field
Agent field
Text field (= Remarks)
I have looked at other tables, example “Preparation Property” or “Collection Object Attr” - I think they can Only handle “Current” data. And it will be helpful if we can be able to extract “maintenance log”.
Thanking you in-advance.

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2

Hi @TshililoP ,

Thanks for reaching out!

I believe the solution you’re looking for is the Conservator Description table. Conservator Description has a many-to-one relationship with Collection Object and can be added as a subview on the Collection Object form.

Conservator Events is another table, many-to-one related with Conservator Description. This would allow you to store multiple histories of Conservator/Maintenance records on a given Collection Object. In other words, you can have multiple Conservator Description records each with its own “history” or set of Conservator Events.

If that extensibility is not needed or preferred, you can also choose to store your Maintenance History as multiple Conservator Description records on the Collection Object, or as multiple Conservator Events on a single Conservator Description.

Conservator Description and Event forms can be customized to suit your needs!
Both tables contain multiple fields for agent, date, and number of other user-definable fields.

By default, the forms appear as shown below:

Subform subview:

Expanded ConservDesc and Event Subform on CO
Expanded ConservDesc and Event Subform on CO1680×1208 190 KB

[!Note]
Note: The “Collection Object” field should be removed from the ConservDescription subview form definition.

XML for subform subview:

    <row>
	   <cell type="subview" id="cd" name="conservDescriptions" viewname="conservDescriptions" colspan="12"/>
      </row>

Conservator Descriptions can also a button subview on Collection Object:

ConservDesc Button Subview After Click
ConservDesc Button Subview After Click1600×1026 133 KB

XML for Button Subview:

<cell type="subview" id="cd" name="conservDescriptions" viewname="conservDescriptions" initialize="btn=true"/>

See our guide on Form Editing for more information:

Additionally, you can change the display names for Conservator Descriptions and Events in your database by editing the table name(s) in Schema Configuration.

I hope this helps! Let us know of any further questions.

:specify:

3

Also, regarding the need to create a maintenance log, this is possible through the Query Builder!

Custom queries can be built and saved to use again and again. Once you build a query to return results that act as the maintenance log, query results can be easily exported to CSV files from within the interface.

You can Query from the ConservDescription table, add the necessary fields on ConservDescription and ConservEvents and map to Collection Object > Catalog Number with the Equal operator as well. Including Catalog Number with this operator will allow you to return results for only the record(s) associated with the Catalog Number(s) entered before running the query.

You are also able to set a custom Table Format and Aggregation for the ConservDescription and ConservEvent tables in the Record Formatters file in App Resources. Table Formats and Aggregations define how queries display results for columns mapped to (formatted) and/or (aggregated) fields for a given table.

Relevant Documentation:

4

Many thanks @bronwynscc !!!