Issue Editing Taxon Form in Specify 7

Hello,

I’m trying to edit the Taxon form in the Specify 7 application within my discipline. Typically, you can modify a form by accessing it directly and clicking the “Form Definition” button. However, for the Taxon form, that link is missing (please refer to the image below).

I also attempted to edit the Taxon form via the “Resources” > “Form Definition” section (see image). While I was able to make and save changes there, those edits do not appear when I access the Taxon form through the “Data Entry” menu.

I’ve confirmed that the Taxon form is only defined in my discipline, so there shouldn’t be any conflicts or overrides from other form definitions. I’ve also deleted my browser cache.

Has anyone encountered this issue or have insights into why this might be happening? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!


Specify 7 Version: v7.10.2
@Amelie

Hi @Heryk,

In most cases, Specify will look for the view definition named exactly as the table is (in your case, Specify is looking for the Taxon view definition, ignoring Taxon2):

See this section of the “Editing Forms in Specify” doc:

View Definition Names

In most cases, the table has the same view name as its default view (e.g. Collection Object will display the view definition named CollectionObject, Accession will display Accession, and Collecting Event will display CollectingEvent).

Some tables use a special name for the view definition that is not always the same as the name of the table. The entire list of such cases are included below:

Table Name Default View Name
Attachment AttachmentsForm
Collecting Trip CollectingTripForm
Journal JournalForm
Other Identifier OtherIdentifiers
FieldNotebookAttachment ObjectAttachment
FieldNotebookPageSet ObjectAttachment

Because there is a default Taxon form, it uses that instead of the one you’ve defined. The reason there is the possibility to name a view definition is for cases where you need to reference them as a viewname="" when editing the XML for a subview (e.g. Determination or Preparation).

If you create a view definition named “Taxon” in the appropriate collection/discipline app resource directory, you should see the custom form! Can you let me know if you have any issues after trying this?

Thank you!

2 Likes

It worked! I simply renamed my form to “taxon” as suggested.
Thanks again! :smiley: