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Thomas Trombone
Posts:33
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| 22-04-2010 12:50 AM |
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Recently we came across a data entry error that I had made in a Locality record. I had added a comment (LatComment_nesttab) to a set of latitude/longitude coordinates in one record and I then wanted to add the same comment to a different record. Apparently I hit F9 instead of simply pasting the comment into the field. By dittoing with F9 I overwrote all the data on that line, including the coordinates of the second record, which I did not notice had been changed before saving the record.
I figured out what had happened by looking at the audit trails of the two records. In the relevant Audit Trail record it was easy to see that in the second record I had updated many more fields (LatLatitudeDecimal_nesttab, LatLatitudeDM_nesttab, etc.) than I had meant to. This got me to thinking about ways to prevent such unintentional changes caused by user error (in other words, how to idiot-proof EMu -- especially when I'm the idiot!)
Right now when I edit a record and save it with Ctrl+S I am not prompted in any way. Since changes to fields are written to the Audit Trail module, it seems like it might be possible to also have them displayed on-screen in a pop-up window, maybe with a warning such as "You are about to change the values of the following fields..." followed by a list of fields and the values being changed. Of course it would be best if such a warning screen were implemented as optional, though perhaps we'd want some users not to have permission to disable the option.
I can think of other situations where one might not be aware of unintentional changes made to a record; for example, accidentally hitting Shift+F9 instead of Ctrl+Shift+F9 will ditto all fields in the record, meaning you might accidentally make changes to fields you don't even see on the current tab. Of course examining the audit trail record after saving the record would reveal the same information, but that seems impractical, particularly if you *think* you are only changing the contents of a single field.
At any rate I am throwing this out as a suggestion. Does anyone else think this would be a useful safeguard?
Tom Trombone
AMNH
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Thomas J. Trombone
American Museum of Natural History
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DucPhong Nguyen
Posts:17
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| 22-04-2010 1:00 AM |
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Hi Tom,
I never realized there wasn't a prompt when clicking on the Save button or using Ctrl+S. However, there IS a prompt when prior to saving, the user creates a new record or if already in a group, go to the Next record. I believe that such a prompt is exactly what you asked for and should pop up. I also wonder whether this should be controlled via the Registry to have it turned off (similar to how lookup list validation, with or without prompts) so that different museums can opt in or out.
Ducky (NMAI) |
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Thomas Trombone
Posts:33
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| 22-04-2010 1:24 AM |
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Hi Ducky,
I suspect the reason there is no prompt when clicking Save or using Ctrl+S is because those are viewed as explicit and intentional "save" operations, whereas moving to the next record or creating a new record are not (in the latter cases you aren't telling the system explicitly to save any changes, so it needs to ask you what to do.) This approach makes sense to me, *IF* you're confident that you didn't make any mistakes before explicitly saving a record. My present concern is basically how to save myself from myself, i.e., if I DID make an mistake, how can I catch it before committing it to the database?
The generic "Would you like to save your changes" prompt would not have helped me in the situation I described above, because I knew I was making a change to one field. I just didn't know I was unintentionally also creating an error in another field at the same time. What I'm after is more a way to check over all the changes that will be committed before they actually are committed.
I suppose the idea might be overkill, but I don't see any other reliable way to force a user to "approve" all changes before saving them. Of course a user might still just click "Ok, commit all these changes" without really paying attention, but at least the warning screen would serve as a flag.
None of this would be necessary if we never make mistakes, but having had to admit (to a curator, no less!) that I am imperfect, I'd love to have a better (but still practical) protocol for preventing/catching such errors. |
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Thomas J. Trombone
American Museum of Natural History
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