I Fish Data Portal Update
Tips
- This tip comes from Seth Love: I'm finding that when exporting long-term data for prolific species, the web page either crashes or the Excel file exported is empty (the column headers are there, but the rows are blank). For instance, I wasn't able to download 1990 –2020 impoundment electrofishing LMB data, but I can download 1990 – 1993 data. From the "tests" I've done, I can get 4 years of LMB data at a time. I'm just going to download it in chunks, and then copy/past it all into one Excel file. Looks like 4 years of LMB data is 54k rows, and the Excel version the data is exported in (1997–2003) supports 64k rows. YES! Large data sets can be problematic, so definitely do these in chunks as Seth suggests.
- Reminder: Save often. We do not have auto-save at this time and so you should be saving after every few entries, especially if your internet is not consistent.
- Remember we have a real-time status report for items that are currently being worked on as well as a list of what's been completed. You can view this listing anytime here or by accessing via the "Report a Bug" menu.
- Do you need to add a new waterbody? You can contact either the regional administrator for your district or Kim Stanhope to get a waterbody added to the system. Here is the information we need:
- Waterbody Name
- County
- Waterbody Type (Hatchery, Impoundment, Private, Rearing Pond, Research Lab, River)
- Class (commercial, Federal, Organization, Public- coop, Public -other, State)
- Directions (you can be as specific or vague as you'd like here)
- All browsers are not created equal! If you're having difficulty creating a waterbody station "on the fly," here is a workaround:
Go to Fish Assessments>Waters>Waterbody Station>Create a New Waterbody Station - If you have a question or need something ASAP, please call or email Kim or Tommie! You do not have to submit a bug report for simple clarification or help with a specific problem.
- Kim Stanhope: Stanhope@illinois.edu; 217-300-4024
- Tommie McNamara: tmmcnama@illinois.edu
What's New with the Portal:
Updates 2021:
We are working on the analysis portion of the portal at the moment, but are making some updates and bug fixes along the way. Please keep sending in any bug reports or issues you have!
Recent improvements:
- Data Entry Improvements
- MACH Entry Improvements
- Merging of Fish Measurement and Samples Grid
- Species Table Updates
Updates November 2020:
Waterstations Grid Update: Latitude/Longitude was added to the waterstation grid so you can filter on a lake name and get all the coordinates for the stations (where available) to export to Excel.
Updates October 2020:
Merge Fish Measurement and Samples Grid: The Fish Measurement Grid and the Samples Grid are now all one grid. The clickable Measured Count column from the Fish Measurement Grid was added to the Samples Grid and the Fish Measurement Grid was then eliminated. (This is in preparation for the analytics package.)
MACH Report Grid Update: When running a MACH report, users had to scroll to the bottom to see results/no results. Because this occurred "below the fold" users may not have been aware the query was done. It has now been updated so that when the report is generated, the page scrolls to the results automatically so they are seen immediately by the viewer. In addition, there was a slowness to the query speed on this page and Steven has fixed this.
Cursor Starting Point for Single Entry Fish: The cursor starts in the length box for the first fish, but after submitting the first fish the cursor started in the count box. The request was for it to start in the length box after the initial first fish. This is has been updated per the request.
Converting STAFF to VOLUNTEER: When DNR staff retire, it is not uncommon for them to come back to volunteer. Because they are in the system as staff, you could not convert them to volunteer. There is now a button where admins can convert staff to volunteers. NOTE: this is in the admin menu and would need to be done by managers.
Updates Spring 2020:
MACH Data Saving: We were having trouble with some of the MACH data not being saved. This seemed to be happening when hitting SAVE multiple times during the entering of fish measurements. We want you to hit SAVE multiple times! Unfortunately, the system was not saving MACH data from the previous save. This is no longer an issue.
Latitude and Longitude: There were some saving issues where after saving, the Lat and Long would get switched in the sample data. This has been fixed.
Fahrenheit/Celsius: You can enter air and water temperature in a sample using either F or C. In our database, all Fahrenheit entries get converted into Celsius. When you go back into your sample, if you entered in F it will now be displayed in C (correctly, we fixed this). E.g., if you entered an air temperature in your sample of 80 degrees F, when you go back into your sample, it will read 26.66666C.
General Report: Well, sometimes you fix one thing, and it breaks another! We were having issues with error messages showing up when generating a report for certain counties. When we figured out why that was happening, and fixed it, we started getting reports generated that duplicated the data several times (actually, the data was being duplicated the same number of times as there were samples). So, we figured that out. And now it is all fixed.
Group Weight and Length: The Excel export did not have the Max Length displayed and it does now.
What We Are Working On:
We are working hard to get the export data to Metrics to work. Please be patient as we are doing our best to get these exports to work correctly for everyone for every scenario.