This page covers the different behaviour you can control in the Point Blue Science Cloud through Preferences. These Preferences are currently only administered by Point Blue staff – please contact them for changing them for your Projects and Protocols.

Preferences can be assigned to a specific Project / Protocol combination, all Protocols for a Project, and/or all Projects for a Protocol.

Site Conditions Style for Point Counts (PointCountSiteConditionsStyle)

When you collect Site Conditions with your Event and Observation data, they are assigned to the same Sampling Unit that you used for your Event/Observation. A Point Count, however, has two different levels of Sampling Units involved – data is collected at one or more Point Count Points under a Point Count Transect.

For Site Conditions at a Point Count, sometimes the procedures have you collect one set of data for the entire transect; for others, you collect a separate set of fields for each point; and for others, you do both. The Biologists application can do all three and is triggered by the combination of Project and Point Count Protocol (not the Site Condition Protocol), allowing the user to select a Site Condition Protocol and enter Site Conditions for the Transect or for the Points, or to select two separate Site Condition Protocols and use one for the Transect and one for the Points.

• Preference: PointCountSiteConditionsStyle

• Project: Your project ID or a wildcard “*” (would happen for all projects using the protocol)

• Protocol: The Point Count protocol or a wildcard “*” (would happen for all protocols in that project)

• Available preference values:

  • transect (default) – collect site conditions once for the transect

  • point – collect site conditions for each point

  • both – collect site conditions for both transect and point for site conditions

    • both can also specify the default protocol to use, like: both|{"point":"Prot1","transect":"Prot2"}

Whether to require site conditions on data entry (RequireSiteConditions)

When you enter data in Biologists, and a project has both an Observation Protocol (such as Point Count or Area Search) as well as a Site Condition protocol, by default the user has the option whether or not to use the Site Condition protocol in their data entry. This preference can force the user to select a Site Condition protocol when entering data.

• Preference: RequireSiteConditions

• Project: Your project ID or a wildcard “*” (would happen for all projects using the protocol)

• Protocol: The observation protocol or a wildcard “*” (would happen for all protocols in that project)

• Available preference values:

  • false (default) - site conditions are not required

  • true - site conditions are required