Field - Activity / Safety / Evaluation

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Purpose

The DIY form modules (Activity, Safety, Evaluation) allow field staff the ability to capture the results of a variety of field activities through a unique, customizable, mobile interface. Your MetaField Administrators can build forms for your use in Field and tailor the client report to support your customer's needs. Since the functionality of Activity, Safety and Evaluation forms is primarily the same, Field functionality for all of these form types will be covered here.

Groups and Forms

When you first open Activity from the main Field menu, you will need to select the correct project. Once your project is selected, you will see a screen with one or more Group buttons (blue bars). Group buttons are built by your MetaField Administrators and are a way to categorize the different Activity Forms your company uses. When you select a Group, you will see the available Forms for that Group.


Search

If you have a large number of groups or forms, you can search for a specific item by using the search fields on the screen.


If a Description is provided in Administration as part of the form setup, that Description will display below the form name on the screen above.

Adding a New Record

To create a new Activity you must first select the appropriate Group and then choose your Form.

All Forms require three pieces of information. These three fields may be labeled differently based on your organization's needs.

  1. Number (different numbering rules available)
  2. Date
  3. Name

Beyond these three items, forms are built by your MetaField Administrators and can be tailored to your organization's specific needs. When building forms in Administration, the system supports:

  • Multiple field types, to make data entry easier
  • Marking fields as required / not required for data entry
  • Allow fields to be editable / not editable in Field and Quality Control 
  • Calculated values based on input in other fields
  • Fields to be visible based on data enter in other fields
  • Two layers of data grids
  • Different titles and legal text based on from where the report was generated (Field or Quality Control)

Saving a Record

You have two options when saving: Save and Save As Draft.

FieldDescription
Save
  • Saves the form record with a status of Entered.
  • Form record will be available in QC.
  • Form record can be included on a Daily Report.
Save As Draft
  • Saves the form record with a status of Draft
  • Bypasses any field validation (i.e. required fields can be left blank)
  • Provides the option to Continue (Save & Continue) or Close (close form in Draft status)
  • Form record will NOT be available in QC
  • Form record will NOT be available to be included on a Daily Report.
  • Can be accessed within the Manage Activities Field screen

After saving, your form record will be assigned a number and you will be presented with the following additional options.

ButtonAction
Add Activity / Safety / Evaluation
  • Brings you back to the main form screen so you can select the appropriate group and form for a new form record
Copy Last Activity
  • Opens up a new form with fields pre-populated with the same data as the last Activity record that was saved.
  • Fields that do not have data copied over are fields that have been set up by your activity administrator to clear upon copying
Manage Activity / Safety / Evaluation
  • Displays the screen to filter and open previously created form records
  • By default numerous filter controls exist to filter the data
  • Your Administrator can configure additional filter controls for your organization

Associate Reports 

  • Allows you to associate your form record with other reports
Add New Field Activity
  • Allows you to quickly enter another type of Field transaction for the same project
My Assignments
  • Allows you to return to the "My Assignments" page (only applies to users with Field permissions)

Manage Activity / Safety / Evaluation

The Manage screen provides filter controls to look up previously entered activity records. Form records meeting the defined filter criteria are displayed at the bottom of the screen and grouped by form and sorted by date (most recent first). Selecting a form record will open the record up for editing. 

Associating Reports to a Form Record

Reports sent to Delivery as well as Field Reports can be associated with form records in the Field module. Associated reports will be appended to reports when generated. To do this once a form record has been saved, select the Associate Reports button from the list of options. Select the Add Reports button. Fill in the appropriate search criteria to find the reports you would like to associate with the form record. Select Search, select the reports you would like to associate with the activity record and select the Associate Reports button. Select Save Associations to save the report association. More reports can be added to the association by selecting Add Reports.

Copying an Existing Form Record

You can create a new form record by copying an existing record. To do this you can either select the Copy Last Activity / Safety / Evaluation button that appears after saving a record, or from Manage Activity / Safety / Evaluation select the arrow button next to the record you want to copy. A new form record will be pre-populated for you. Any fields that were set to NOT copy by your administrator will be cleared on the copied record.

  

Form Status

When a form record is first added in Field it is saved in the status of Entered. The status can later be updated in Quality Control to Review or Complete. Whenever an edit is made to an existing form record, whether that be in Field or Quality Control, the record status is automatically updated to Entered.

Unlike other areas of MetaField, Field users can make changes to an Activity record in any status.

You can filter the list of form records by status.

Visualization Rules and Hidden Data

Depending on how your form was built, it may contain visualization rules that result in fields being hidden/displaying based on entries made in other fields. Sometimes a field may display and data entered into it, and later hidden based on edits to other fields. When a field with data is hidden, the hidden data will not appear on the Report or Data Extracts. However, this data will be retained in case the conditions are met later for the field to be exposed again.

Manage Density Retests

This button represents the amount of DIY Activity Forms with Form Setting = Density Test - Soil Nuclear Gauge, Retest = Yes, AND it does not have a related test. This button will ONLY appear if items fall into this queue. Users will be able to adjust what they can filter by, and what is displayed under "Density Retests" in Administration / Activity / Search / Results Display / Field Activity Retest Results (As explained here)