Hi There SMART Community
We are debating whether or not to do our annual game count as a Patrol or a Survey this year.
Previously, we did our game count as a Patrol, and configured the attribute corresponding to game reserve “zone” to a default value, depending on which which team was operating in which zone. So we had for example, 7 different configurable models & field packages, each with a different default “zone” value selected, for the 7 different field devices, doing the count in 7 different zones. This was to ensure that all patrol data could be queried according to “zone.” We know that we can create a custom patrol attribute for “zone” that each team can then select from, and that this would appear as “metadata” alongside our patrol observations. But this metadata info only appears when you do a patrol query.
This is a problem, because last year we trialed Survey for our Game Count, and configured the Mission Attribute “Zone” for each team to select at the start of the survey (i.e. zone mission attribute became SURVEY metadata). This was more simple than configuring 7 different packages.
But now we realize that you can only access patrol metadata & survey mission properties using the respective patrol & survey query types, so these data cannot be queried together, and simultaneously filtered by zone.
It would be a big help if 1) observation queries tacked on “metadata” columns for patrol/survey data (patrol attribute/survey mission properties columns behind the observation columns), so we could obs query “game count” and sort by “patrol zone or survey zone”. Or 2) these custom attributes/properties could be linked to the corresponding DM attribute. It is strange that metadata options for patrols/surveys require the creation of attributes that live separate to the main DM, and cannot be linked. Please could we prioritise this link for future SMART iterations.
Now we have the same data effectively living in seperate “pockets” of our CA, each requiring it’s own type of query. Does anyone have any advice/way forward for us from here?
Sorry for the wordy post, please let me know if anything needs clarification, this was tricky to type!
Many Thanks
Michelle Bouwer