Field - Activity

Table of Contents	Pages

Purpose

The Activity Field module allows field staff the ability to capture the results of a variety of field activities through a unique, customizable interface. Your MetaField Administrators can build forms for your use in Field and tailor the client report to support your customer's needs.

Activity 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.

Adding a New Activity

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.

Activity Number
Activity Date
Person's 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:

Eleven different 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 an Activity

After you complete all required fields, you will be allowed to save your activity. After saving, your Activity will be assigned an Activity number and you will be presented with the following additional options.

Button	Action
Add Activity	Brings you back to the main Activity screen so you can select the appropriate group and form for a new Activity
Manage Activities	Displays the Manage Activities screen to filter and open previously created activity records By default numerous filter controls exist to filter the activity data Your Administrator can configure additional filter controls for your organization
Create Report	Brings you to Field Reports to create an Activity Field Report You can choose which Activities you want to be added to your Field Report Screen will be prefiltered to the Group and Form you just saved, as well as the current date (these values can be changed)
Add New Field Activity	Allows you to quickly enter another type of Field transaction for the same project.

Managing Activities

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

Copying an Existing Activity Record

You can create a new Activity Record by copying an existing record. To do this you can either select the Copy Last Activity button that appears after saving a record, or from Manage Activities select the arrow button next to the record you want to copy. A new Activity 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.

Activity Status

When an Activity 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 Activity 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 Activity records by status in Manage Activities.

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.