logo Calflora Coordinating Groups Design
version 4 December 1, 2019; Updated July 25, 2020
History of Groups


Groups (help page) were introduced in 2011 as a way of enabling teams of people to work on plant observations together. Group members can see unpublished records from other members. Resources such as plant lists and polygons can be assigned to a group and shared by group members.

Weed Manager was introduced in 2013. A Weed Manager group may have additional resources defined, such as projects, saved searches, column sets, crew, activities, and chemicals.

With Weed Manager, situations soon emerged where one user needed to be a member of multiple groups working closely together, and to be able to search for records from more than one group at the same time. The Multiple Group Search application was introduced in 2016 to meet this need.

In the current system, there is no easy way for multiple groups to share resources such as plant lists. The only way to handle it is to duplicate the resources, once for each group that needs them. The Coordinating Groups feature is a design change to Weed Manager intended to address this and other related problems.

Definitions
Shareable Resource Data: plant lists, polygons, forms

Observation Data: observation records, survey records

Regular Group: a group that produces observation data

Coordinating Group (CG): a group that does not produce or own observation data, but may
    • produce resource data, and share it with affiliate regular groups,

    • have read only access to observation data produced by affiliate regular groups
Affiliate: a regular group that shares observation data with a coordinating group

Group Relationship: the relationship between a regular group and a coordinating group.

The Design
The Coordinating Groups feature will make it possible for groups working in the same area to work together more easily. Groups will be able to share plant lists and polygons. Members of a Coordinating Group will be able to see observation records of all affiliate groups -- this is particularly important when working in a border region between areas managed by different groups.

A regular group owner needs to know exactly who can see their group's observation data.

In this design, data sharing between two regular groups without a CG is not possible. If two regular groups are affiliates of a CG, then the members of the CG can see observation data in the two regular groups.

The owner of a CG controls who is a member of that group, and thereby who can see the observation data of the affiliate regular groups. It may be expedient to add someone to a CG temporarily, for instance to enable their work in a border area, so that they can see the observations of all of the affiliate regular groups.
A group cannot simultaneously be a regular group and a CG. One regular group can be affiliated with more than one CG.

The group relationship is only possible between a CG and a regular group. The group relationship is not transitive, so that nested groups are not possible. If nested groups were possible, then when a regular group owner joined a CG, they might be giving access to their group's data to unknown strangers who were members of higher level CGs.

Example Group Relationship
A CG is created for the purpose of monitoring observations from several regular groups. The affiliate regular groups share observation data with the CG. The CG may maintain plant lists and region polygons, and share them with the affiliate regular groups.

A member of the CG can see, but not edit, any published observation data produced by the affiliate regular groups. Each regular group can choose to also share unpublished and/or private data with the CG. A member of one of the affiliate regular groups can see and use resource data produced by the CG.

Coordinating Group A ← observations

resources → 		Regular Group 1
Regular Group 2
Regular Group 3



A person not in my group wants to see my group's observations...
If you want a person not in your group to be able to see your group's observations, there are a few ways to go.
  1. Publish the records that you want to share with this person. They (together with other members of the public) will be able to see your records using the Observation Search application, but without treatment information.

  2. Add the person to your group as a non-contributing member. Once you have done this, the person will be able to use Multiple Group Search (or equivalent) to see your group's observations, including treatment information, together with observations from any of their other groups.

  3. Start a new CG, and set up a group relationship between your group and the new CG. Add this person to the new CG. They will be able to see your group's observations, not including treatment information. If any other people become members of the new CG, they will also be able to see your group's observations.
Setting up a Group Relationship
For two groups to enter into a data sharing relationship, both group owners must agree to it. Initially Calflora staff will maintain group relationships. Later on there could be a user interface for group owners with which they could request a relationship with another group -- the other group owner would be notified and could accept or reject the request.

When a regular group owner chooses to join a CG, their group's published data will be shared with the CG. They might also decide to share private data and unpublished data with the CG.

Changes to the User Interface
Consider the experience of a user in a CG looking at observation data produced by affiliate regular groups. This user must be able to easily see which regular group is responsible for each record. Some web applications and phone applications will need to be adjusted to allow for this. A new symbology, where the color of the icon on the map indicates which group produced an observation, could help.

Resources (plant lists, polygons) can be quite voluminous even for a single group. For an application like Group Observations, a user needs to be able to easily control which group's resources they see, so as not to be overwhelmed.

The Group Home page for a CG will show which regular groups are affiliated with it.

New Functions Enabled by Coordinating Groups
Auto-assign Group and Project
Suppose regular group #1 hires a contractor to assess or treat weeds in a border area between one of group #1's management units and a management unit belonging to regular group #2. Most of the records collected by the contractor will be on group #1's land, but some will be on group #2's land. When these records are first collected, they are all owned by group #1. Those records which are on group #2's land should be assigned to group #2,and put in the appropriate group #2 project.

This can be done manually in the current system by a person who has data czar permission in both groups.

When Coordinating Groups are available, it will be possible to develop an application that partially automates this task. This application will be a decision support system, where the user trains the application how to re-assign the ownership of observation records.

The person using the application will be a member of the CG that includes both group #1 and group #2 as affiliates. The application will find observation records that are owned by group #1 but located inside of a region polygon (management unit) owned by group #2. The user will choose which group #2 project to put the record in, based on the plant and the management unit. The next time the application finds a record of that same plant in that same region polygon, it will automatically put the record into the same group #2 project.


Group Reports.
The standard Group Reports application will change -- instead of choosing a single group, as it is now, a user will be able to report on data from any of the groups they are a member of. If the user is a member of a CG, they will be able to report on any of the affiliate groups of that CG. The standard reports will be adapted to work on multiple groups.

What is Shared and what isn't
When a regular group is an affiliate of a CG, a member of the CG can see the following types of data owned by the regular group:
  • Observation Records, not including treatment information.
  • Survey records.
A regular group can limit what it shares with a CG by access (choosing whether to share private or unpublished data), but not by by project or geography.

Searches:
When using a search application such as Multiple Group Search (or equivalent), a member of a CG will be able to see only publicly available core Calflora fields -- the same fields that are available now in Observation Search. A member of a CG will not be able to see fields related to treatment, or any other group specific fields.

Reports:
For the purpose of running a report, a member of a CG will have access to two aspects of an observation record which are not publicly available:
  • whether the record describes treatment, and

  • the total number of person hours expended.
With this access, it will be possible to have a CG level report on things like acres treated and total hours expended. It will not be possible to report on other aspects of treatment, such as which chemical was used, or what treatment technique was employed.