New Features in 2023

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -Margaret Mead

Thanks to all of you who joined us!  Coffee Chat attendees who are attending the meeting gave us their level of expertise in using IrisBG. 54% were intermediate users, 25% were advanced, and 21% were novice.    At the end of this article, we share a list of Q&A from the chat section of the Coffee Chat. Thank you for all the engagement!

The map below shows the locations of all the gardens and arboreta represented by everyone that registered for the July Coffee Chat - home offices not taken into consideration.  

During our August Coffee Chat, Shanna Jones, Social Media and Community Outreach Assistant and Laura Knutson Murray, GIS Coordinator and Community Outreach Assistant for IrisBG, selected the top new features that reflect improvements to productivity and data integrity. The new features discussed are organized by the screen from which the feature is accessed.

🌱Three new feature requests were made during the discussions and will be released in a future update. (Read on for details). Thank you IrisBG Community, for your feature requests that improve the functionality of IrisBG.

Q&A

Q: Is the link to World Flora Online live or static data?

A:  It is a live link to the World Flora Online website.

Q: When using the Copy Item feature, are you able to select which item in an accession to copy?

A: Yes. You are able to select which item you want to copy.

Q: Could you give an example of a project?

A: Projects can be new developments or a themed group of accessions that are planted in multiple locations.

Q: Is an expedition a project or a collector team?

A: An expedition might best be handled as a collector team. A Project could be something like: "East African Plants" where several expeditions and individual collectors participate.

Q: For those gardens without an herbarium, and define accession item types, do you define out Plantings Seed and Cutting or lump as planting category?

A: Seeds and cuttings are material types. Seeds can be defined as an item type if they are kept in a dedicated seed store.

Q: I would like to see what other gardens consider trees vs shrubs.

A: This resource might help: https://woodlandclassroom.com/trees-versus-shrubs/

Q: I've found it difficult to find Images small enough for icons to represent Preserved Materials.

A: We have a few saved here that work well.  

Q: How do you set up a virtual tour?

A: See the KL article Add a Tour to your explorer. 

Q: Are Themes used to build tours?

A: No, but themes can be shown for plants included in a tour. Also, the main page of the Garden Explorer can have themes added as a drop down menu for a search.

Q: Are themes an extra cost?

A: No. Themes are available for you to build into IrisBG as a part of the standard package. The Web Explorer/Garden Explorer is an additional cost.

Q: What would the column heading in a data upload file for a theme? How would you upload multiple themes for an individual taxa at the same time?

A: Here is a Taxon Theme import template.

Q: Can we report on particular Library items? A list of the files in the accession record? We save library items such as receipts, Plant Transaction Reports, emails, maps, etc... I've been storing the images under Accessions References.  

A: Yes. We will add this in the next update.🌱

Q: Are the taxa/accession figures on Garden Explorer (RBGE example) auto-updated with each upload? 

A: Yes these figures are automatically updated with Web Explorer Uploads.

Q: Are there other metrics that can be added for a dashboard type interface?  Provenance or countries represented?

A: Yes. These can be added. A list of all available metrics are on your Web Explorer admin page. Let us know what you would like in a dashboard. 🌱

Q: Can exclude trade name be an option for reports? We have to manually do this for making labels.

A: This will be added. 🌱