Collaborative Data Management
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Kleinfeldt, Sally
Sally Kleinfeldt describes why some research projects need both data management and collaboration, and how Plone perfectly fills that need
 Hello, I'm Sally Klangfeldt from JazzCarta and I'd like to talk about collaborative data management. Scientists and researchers of all kinds produce data, data which needs to be managed. Project data often start out in a spreadsheet or access database. If the research team is big enough, the next step is often a web database with a user interface for data entry and reporting. That solves the data management needs of many projects. However, when different team members need different kinds of data access, simple data management is not enough. For example, some team members might enter data while others review and publish it. On a botany or ecology project, some people may be responsible for entering field data and others for entering lab data about the same organism. Some data fields may be so sensitive that only a few people are allowed access. An example of this is the location of a rare or endangered plant. And these kinds of projects often need other collaboration features as well. The team may need to share things like PDF files, photographs, calendars, and general information. Such projects require more than data management. They need a system that also supports collaboration. I call this collaborative data management. There are no off-the-shelf collaborative data management systems, so the question is, how can we create one? As a general rule, data management systems can be pretty simple, but collaboration systems by their nature are more complex. They need to manage user groups and roles. They need to provide workflows so information can be private or published. And they need to provide fine-grained access control, which can be based on location, role, workflow state, data type, even individual data fields. Because of this, adding advanced collaboration and access control features to a data management system would be a lot of work. But adding data management to the right collaboration system can be straightforward. What is the right collaboration system? Plone is the perfect collaboration system to add data management features to. Plone is rich in collaboration features. Out of the box, it provides member roles, workflows, fine-grained, placeful access control, permission-sensitive search, and many other features. And it's very easy to define and add custom content types to Plone, which are perfect for capturing project data. In Plone, custom content types can have any number of data fields, extensive vocabularies. There can be many different types of fields, strings, integers, rich text, images, even geolocations. Custom types can even act like a folder and contain any number of files, images, and other content objects. Let's look at an example of a collaborative data management system built with Plone. The North American Orchid Conservation Center is a coalition of organizations dedicated to conserving North America's diverse orchid heritage. As part of their conservation mission, they're developing national collections of orchids and their seeds. The collections are managed at collaborating institutions where analysis, preservation, and propagation work takes place. Lots and lots of data is captured about each orchid in the field and in the lab, and different groups of people perform different tasks. Collaborating botanists enter data and submit it for review. Addnance, review, and publish the data. Then other collaborators can see some of the published data, but not all of it. Whereas anonymous users can't see any of the data at all. In addition to the data, everyone needs to share project documents, news events, and other types of information. Let's look at the results. With minimal development effort, JustCarta provided all the features Mayak asked for, plus a whole lot more that just came out of the box, on a very simple Plone site. Here's what the site looks like to anonymous users. They can see the homepage and some public reports, news, and events. And here's what the site looks like to an admin user. Notice that additional sections of the site are now available on the top navigation menu. The section containing the orchid data. A section where they can search for other users and see their shared information. And a section for collaborators to share documents, events, etc. You can also see a toolbar on the left, allowing them to add, edit, and publish content and perform other administrative functions. A big thank you to Mayak. They funded this work as an open source project, thus making it available to other organizations that wanted a similar system. This kind of easy collaborative data management is just one of the ways Plone is a great tool for scientific research. If you browse the playlists on the Plone CMS YouTube channel for World Plone Day or the Plone Conferences, you'll find other examples of scientists and researchers taking advantage of Plone's rich set of features on their projects. And feel free to reach out to me if you'd like more information about NEOX Collaborative Data Management System. Thanks.
 Hello, I'm Sally Klangfeldt from JazzCarta and I'd like to talk about collaborative data management.  Scientists and researchers of all kinds produce data, data which needs to be managed.  Project data often start out in a spreadsheet or access database.  If the research team is big enough, the next step is often a web database with a user interface for data entry and reporting.  That solves the data management needs of many projects.  However, when different team members need different kinds of data access, simple data management is not enough.  For example, some team members might enter data while others review and publish it.  On a botany or ecology project, some people may be responsible for entering field data and others for entering lab data about the same organism.  Some data fields may be so sensitive that only a few people are allowed access.  An example of this is the location of a rare or endangered plant.  And these kinds of projects often need other collaboration features as well.  The team may need to share things like PDF files, photographs, calendars, and general information.  Such projects require more than data management.  They need a system that also supports collaboration.  I call this collaborative data management.  There are no off-the-shelf collaborative data management systems, so the question is, how can we create one?  As a general rule, data management systems can be pretty simple, but collaboration systems by their nature are more complex.  They need to manage user groups and roles.  They need to provide workflows so information can be private or published.  And they need to provide fine-grained access control, which can be based on location, role, workflow state, data type, even individual data fields.  Because of this, adding advanced collaboration and access control features to a data management system would be a lot of work.  But adding data management to the right collaboration system can be straightforward.  What is the right collaboration system?  Plone is the perfect collaboration system to add data management features to.  Plone is rich in collaboration features.  Out of the box, it provides member roles, workflows, fine-grained, placeful access control, permission-sensitive search, and many other features.  And it's very easy to define and add custom content types to Plone, which are perfect for capturing project data.  In Plone, custom content types can have any number of data fields, extensive vocabularies.  There can be many different types of fields, strings, integers, rich text, images, even geolocations.  Custom types can even act like a folder and contain any number of files, images, and other content objects.  Let's look at an example of a collaborative data management system built with Plone.  The North American Orchid Conservation Center is a coalition of organizations dedicated to conserving North America's diverse orchid heritage.  As part of their conservation mission, they're developing national collections of orchids and their seeds.  The collections are managed at collaborating institutions where analysis, preservation, and propagation work takes place.  Lots and lots of data is captured about each orchid in the field and in the lab, and different groups of people perform different tasks.  Collaborating botanists enter data and submit it for review.  Addnance, review, and publish the data.  Then other collaborators can see some of the published data, but not all of it.  Whereas anonymous users can't see any of the data at all.  In addition to the data, everyone needs to share project documents, news events, and other types of information.  Let's look at the results.  With minimal development effort, JustCarta provided all the features Mayak asked for, plus a whole lot more that just came out of the box, on a very simple Plone site.  Here's what the site looks like to anonymous users.  They can see the homepage and some public reports, news, and events.  And here's what the site looks like to an admin user.  Notice that additional sections of the site are now available on the top navigation menu.  The section containing the orchid data.  A section where they can search for other users and see their shared information.  And a section for collaborators to share documents, events, etc.  You can also see a toolbar on the left, allowing them to add, edit, and publish content and perform other administrative functions.  A big thank you to Mayak.  They funded this work as an open source project, thus making it available to other organizations that wanted a similar system.  This kind of easy collaborative data management is just one of the ways Plone is a great tool for scientific research.  If you browse the playlists on the Plone CMS YouTube channel for World Plone Day or the Plone Conferences,  you'll find other examples of scientists and researchers taking advantage of Plone's rich set of features on their projects.  And feel free to reach out to me if you'd like more information about NEOX Collaborative Data Management System.  Thanks.
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