Hi forum!
Anybody using SMART Survey plug-in or Collect for any of the following purposes please give me a shout, I’d love to discuss.
vegetation surveys
game counts
visiting student/researcher projects
citizen science to help with biodiversity assessments
I’m trying to understand if either or both of these tools will help with situations where numerous non-staff people are collecting quite repetitive data on something within a site’s data model but we want to avoid having multiple people having access to SMART desktop and potentially avoid relying on Connect to send data.
I’m also coming up against challenges with building configurable models in SMART for things like multi-point grass surveys where it’s very quick and repetitive data collection that ideally would have multiple multi-select attributes but we want to avoid entering in unchanging information (e.g. reserve area, survey site, recorder name, etc) again for every point.
Thanks in advance
We have a draft SMART Survey Manual with some training files which is currently being reviewed. Would you be interested in reviewing it and seeing if the tool can be helpful for your use case? I can also set you up test SMART Collect if you would like. We don’t have many sites using it yet as it depends on SMART 7, but maybe @Alex_Wyatt and @Diana can share their experiences using Collect? Thanks!
Yes I’d definitely be interested in taking a look at the manual and training files if you’re happy to share.
Would very much appreciate any insights from Alex and Diana.
Thanks for your help
Hi Lisa and Monica. Months ago I tested SMART COllect with SMART 7 with public and private data models. I feel this new plug in is great when you have people not working in conservation with in a companyor NGO. so they can generate points of any topic that is in your data model, then you import the information with Connect. Really good tool
Lisa, SMART Collect is a great way to get models out to those folk not interacting with the database much or at all. Collect, though, does require SMART Connect so if you’re needing to rely on offline data collection this might not be the best mechanism. However, if you have a server in use, I’d recommend using SMART Collect for users less familiar with SMART. If they do not always have internet connection, the data can be sent when they do come into some connectivity, so it’s not a problem.
Regarding whether to use Survey or Collect depends on the data requirements. If you need to do more structured surveys (i.e. line transects) you may want to use Survey (Ecological Records) whereas if you are using independent observations at single locations, SMART Collect (or even Independent Incidents) may be the best option.
Thanks both for your input, very helpful. I need to take another look at which will suit our needs (maybe both) and may be in touch again with more specific questions.
Much appreciated
Lisa