We continue to enhance QuickTrials based on the great feedback we’re receiving from customers.
The changes below are all about increasing efficiency and further improving the quality of trial data across an organisation.
Library Trials
The Traits Library provides a more automated and simplified way to design trials. Since adding this feature we received an overwhelmingly positive reaction to it from our users. The time required to design trials has shrunk, the consistency between different trials is much higher, and the reusability it provides helps remove redundant trait definitions.
In some cases though even more flexibility is required for certain customers, and so we now added some additional pieces to solve these special use cases.
In-trial traits editing
Changing the definition of traits in an existing trial, after it has been generated from library traits, has been a request for certain use cases. This can now be achieved by clicking on the edit icon to the right of existing traits in trials.
Please note that the usual caveats still apply:
- If you change something here, it will not change in the library, only in this trial
- You can only change attributes that are not locked, in case the trial is active. This means that you will not be able to change, for example, the type of a trait
- It is often better to remove the trait in the trial, edit it in the global library, and then re-add it in the trial, so that you get a fresh updated copy of the library trait and the global library trait is kept updated and can be used in future trials correctly.
Hide visits
Visits are used to define when to collect data in the field. This promotes standardisation of trait collection times across different trials. In some cases though, customers require the flexibility to skip certain visits due to weather, personel, resources or other reasons. In order to facilitate skipping certain visits, we now allow to hide visits on a trial-by-trial basis.
Phase-out of manual trials
With these changes, we believe we now have the features required for all users to switch to the new library trial format. We will therefore deprecate the old manual trials approach so that library trials become the primary way to set up trials for everyone. The old manual trials features will be disabled in 3 months from now (beginning of October 2022). If you have any questions or need help with this transition in any way, please reach out to us at any time.
Information sync to the device
One highly requested feature was the ability to have additional information visible in the mobile app so it could be seen immediately when entering data. We’ve now made it possible to show attributes from global dimensions in the mobile app. For example, at planting, you may want to display the recommended application concentration of different fertilisers that are being tested.
To accomplish this in a way that is easy for field staff, it’s now possible to create derived traits that use a formula to reference attributes from a dimension:
plot().dimensions.fertilizer.rec_l_ha
A new flag of derived traits called “Sync to mobile” then allows to synchronise this trait out to the mobile like any other trait, but in read-only mode.
On the mobile, the information is displayed like any collectable field, but is read-only, as can be seen by the grey background on those fields.
