Latest developments

As we continue to make improvements to SRMS Online we will keep this page updated with a rolling list of key improvements and bug fixes:

21st August 2024

Improvements to Map View

  • A number of new layers have been added to the ‘Toggle Features’ button. Users are now able to toggle on/off a layer for Home Ranges, to see the extent of the computerised Home Ranges that the system is working with in the background (different species have nominally been given different Home Range sizes). This layer is by default turned off. Users are also able to toggle on/off a number of additional layers including protected areas (SPAs, SACs, SSSIs and NNRs). We anticipate expanding this list in future.

Improvements to moving between accounts

  • The process of switching between different accounts has been made smoother. When a user has clicked the blue ‘change’ button and are taken through to the ‘Switch Operating Group’ page they will find that the blue ‘Operate’ buttons on each row have been moved to the left end of each row so that they should always be visible irrespective of screen size. Also, when a user clicks an ‘Operate’ button they will automatically be redirected back to the Home Page for them to continue their session.

7th March 2024

Improvements to Map View

  • Map View has been redesigned to give more focus and space to the map itself. All the tools users are likely to need to interact with are now available from either a single toolbar above the map or via a floating panel that appears when they click to select a location on the map. Previously there were separate panels (Display Tools, Create Tools, Location Options) with various tools that appeared on the left-hand side of the map, but the new layout should be easier to work with and perform better for different screen sizes and devices.
  • As locations are created via the ‘Add locations’ button users are given the opportunity to capture the precision of the location being created. Locations created to 10m, 100m and 1km precision will get displayed on the map as appropriately sized OS gird squares.
  • Users are now able to toggle on/off different map features via the ‘Toggle Features’ button in the toolbar. This includes location labels, different types of locations (Nest Sites/Observation Sites/Study Areas) and measurements (4 figure grid refs, 6 figure grid refs and coordinates). Previously users could only toggle all location types on/off simultaneously, so users will now have greater control over the locations that are mapped at any one time.
  • Map options that  users select such as preferred background map, which locations are toggled on/off and the active coordinate system (OS grid vs lat/long) will be retained between sessions. This means for example, that if a user prefers to always interact with the OS Survey Map rather than the Bing Aerial Map, if they select ‘OS Survey Map’ this will stay as the background until such time as they change it.
  • We have added a feature that allows users to zoom in to a postcode or grid reference via the ‘Zoom to’ button in the toolbar.
  • Users can now add Effort Recording information via Map View by clicking on the ‘Add Effort Recording’ button in the floating panel having selected a Study Area. Previously users could only interact with Effort Recording information by separately accessing the Effort Recording area via the quick access link in the middle of the Home Page or via the ‘Effort Recording’ menu in the black navigation bar. Making Effort Recording more integrated with data entry will hopefully result in more users capturing their Effort Recording within Study Areas, making their data more amenable to contributing to trends production in the future.
  • It is now even easier for users to let us know when Nest Sites have not been visited in a given year. A ‘Specify Nest Site not Visited’ button has been added to the floating panel when a Nest Site in Map View is clicked on.
  • It is now possible to adjust the detailed boundary of Study Areas, i.e. users can now see all the points at which the boundary makes a turn in direction and independently adjust them. Previously, users could only reposition the entire Study Area on the map rather than make more refined adjustments.
  • We’ve changed the colours of the Nest Sites and Observation Sites indicating when visit data have been added for the current breeding season. Where Visit Data have been added for the current season the map symbol is filled and where no data have been added the map symbol remains hollow. Previously it was harder to interpret the colours against different background maps.
  • We have added a ‘Colour by Home Range’ button to the tool bar (which only shows in operating group accounts dedicated to monitoring a single species), which colours the Nest Site and Observation Sites according to the SRMS Home Range they belong to. This allows users to more easily see how Nest Sites and Observation Site are grouped within Home Ranges, meaning that they can more readily spot if anything has been grouped incorrectly so that they can be updated. This functionality is not new but was less obvious in previous versions of SRMS Online.
  • Users can now easily print the map via a ‘Print’ button in the toolbar.
  • Users can now change the location type of any given location, so for example, users can change an Observation Site to a Nest Site or vice versa via a ‘Change location type’ button in the floating panel having selected a location in Map View or via the Options in Table View.

Improvements to List View

  • We have renamed ‘List View’ to ‘Table View’ to better reflect that you are interacting with a table rather that a list.
  • Table View has been redesigned to give more focus and space to the Table itself. All the options are now available from a single toolbar above the table, or via selecting one of the options available in the drop-down in the new ‘Options’ column which has been added as a first column of the table. Previously there were separate panels (Display Tools, Create Tools, Location Options) with various tools that appeared on the left-hand side of the table but the new layout should be easier to work with and perform better for different screen sizes and devices.
  • We have added a new feature which allows users to easily download the tables of locations as a csv file to work with offline. Users can do this via a ‘Download’ button in the toolbar, from where they are able to select whether to download all or just a subset of the locations in Table View.
  • As users create a location via the ‘Add locations’ button they are given the opportunity to capture the precision of the location they are creating. Locations created to 10m, 100m and 1 km precision will get displayed on the map as appropriately sized OS gird squares.

Improvements to Visit Log data entry

  • Tooltips (white ‘?’ in dark blue circles) have been added throughout the page to guide users towards recording the most appropriate information. More helpful messages are displayed to warn about mistakes when entering data such as dates, times and entries in the nest contents fields being invalid or in the incorrect format, so that they can be checked and if necessary, amended before saving.
  • The top of the page has been reorganised to make it more compact allowing the visit area below to be further up the screen than previously, where it could be readily overlooked on smaller screens. The tabs at the top of the page have been renamed to ‘Main’ (from ‘Core’) and ‘Defaults’ (from ‘User codes and defaults’) and the ‘Habitat’ tab has been removed completely. It is possible to clone any of the fields within these tabs by clicking on the field title to copy the information to a new Visit Log.
  • A ‘View on Map’ button has been added to the ‘Main’ tab which allows users to view the Home Range that has been selected on a map. The background defaults to the Ordnance Survey Map but can be readily changed to the Bing Aerial Map or Open Street Map depending on their preference.
  • The presentation order of the fields in the visits section of the page has been changed to ensure that it more closely follows the natural flow of raptor monitoring, with the nest contents fields (Eggs/Young) following after other observations that have been captured via status codes.
  • The entry in the ‘Initials’ field will default to the person making the data entry, unless a default has been previously set in the ‘Defaults’ tab. This can be over-ridden if data are being inputting  on behalf of others. This is important as it ensures that every record submitted is clearly attributable to at least one individual.
  • The entry in the ‘Locations’ field will default to the ‘location’ that may have been selected to ‘Add Visit Data’ to via Map View or Table View (previously ‘List View’) to save users time re-selecting locations from the drop-down. This can be overridden if the intention had been to enter data for an alternative Nest Site or Observation Site within the same Home Range.
  • Working with Status Codes is much smoother. Users can now add up to five status codes through a single opening of the drop-down list and the search functionality on Status Codes and their descriptions is also much improved allowing users to find relevant status codes more quickly. So, if for example as user is trying to find relevant status codes relating to ‘display’ they can type in ‘display’ and it will narrow down the list to those status codes that include the word ‘display’ in their description. The descriptions of status codes are now also presented back to users when they hover over the status codes that have already been entered and saved, which is helpful if users are less familiar with the two letter codes.
  • It is now possible to add extra details to records through a ‘+ Add more details’ button under the ‘Status Codes’ field during data entry. Users are now able to give us more information about any observed birds (count/age/sex) and tell us about any field signs of territory occupation such as plucks (sign/age). Importantly users can use this area to record reasons for failure of breeding attempts and any evidence to support this conclusion in a standardised way which will be important in our work to report temporal and spatial patterns in causes of failure.  It is also apparent when extra detail has been added as the  ‘+ Add extra details’ button turns blue.
  • It is now apparent when an entry has been made in the comments box – the comments button turns blue.
  • It is now easy to enter data for a previous breeding season from an open Visit Log for the current breeding season. Users click on the ‘Start a New Visit Log’ button and a new Visit Log will open pre-populated with the relevant Species and SRMS Home Range information.

Improvements to Nest Site and Observation Site pages

  • The Nest Site & Observation Site pages which users complete when creating these locations (and may subsequently access to update or edit information) is now more compact and spread over multiple tabs with a ‘Main’ tab to ensure that the most important information is captured. The whole page can be activated for editing from a single click. Previously these pages were quite lengthy, and the compulsory fields were distributed across different sections of the page which had to be separately activated for editing.
  • When users create a new location a suggested Location Code will be presented. This can be over-written at a later date by the user creating the account or others with appropriate powers operating in the same account. This means that if a user is uncertain of the most appropriate code to use (e.g. if there may be a pre-existing site coding system overseen by somebody else that you are working with), they are not delayed from entering their Visit Data.

Improvements to Manage Permissions

  • The ‘Manage Permissions’ page has been improved by adding tooltips (white ‘?’ in dark blue circles) to guide users towards selecting the most appropriate options when adding new account members and assigning permissions to them within the account.

Improvements to Observer List

  • The ‘Observer List’ page has been improved by adding tooltips (white ‘?’ in dark blue circles) to guide users towards inputting the most appropriate information to manage the list of Observers that appears in the ‘Initials’ dropdown within each Visit Log within an account.

10th August 2022

Improvements to finding your way around SRMS Online

• The Home Page quick links and menus have been simplified to make it more straightforward for users to find their way around SRMS Online. The ‘Locations’ menu and ‘Location Management’ quick links have been replaced by menu and quick links to get users directly into ‘Map View’ or ‘List View’, depending on their preferred way of working. The ‘Visit Data’ menu has been removed completely (see Improvements to Visit Data entry) and ‘Nest Sites not Visited’ is now a sub-menu of ‘Effort Recording’. The ‘Add Visit/Explore Visit Data’ quick link has been re-named ‘Explore Visit Data’ to put more emphasis on searching data, though users can still choose to use this route to add visit data to any Visit Logs that users choose to retrieve via this route.

• List View now defaults to ‘View by Locations’ rather than ‘View by SRMS Home Ranges’. Previously the List View defaulted to ‘View by SRMS Home Ranges’ but swapping this around gives users more immediate access to locations listed by their user-defined location codes and names.

Improvements to Visit Data entry

• Visit Logs now get initiated automatically at the beginning of the year for all existing Home Ranges and as new locations are created. The ‘Start a new Visit Log’ and ‘Add a new Observation’ quick links (together with the associated sub-menu options previously accessible via the ‘Visit Data’ menu) have therefore been removed from the Home Page. Users previously had to ‘Start a New Visit Log’ for each Home Range that users monitored every breeding season. The fact that Visit Logs are now created automatically at the beginning of each breeding season, will save users a lot of data entry time, particularly if they monitor lots of Home Ranges. Since no individual will need to take responsibility for initiating Visit Logs, multiple Visit Logs should not accidently get initiated for the same Home Range where they are being monitored by multiple raptor workers in collaboration, thereby reducing the potential for duplication across the system.

• Adding visit data is now completely integrated with ‘Map View’ & ‘List View’. Users can click on a location in ‘Map View’ or ‘List View’ and click on an ‘Add data’ button in the ‘Display Tools’ panel to automatically take them to the Visit Log for the current breeding season. Previously, managing and interacting with locations was largely independent from visit data entry and users are likely to have found themselves doing quite a bit of to-ing and fro-ing between ‘Visit Data’ entry and ‘Location Management’ to ensure that they were linking their visit data to the correct location. Being able to efficiently access Visit Logs via their preferred way of working (‘Map View’ or ‘List View’) should save users lots of time.

• The outcome logic has been revised for SRMS Online, so the displayed outcome (Success, Failure, No breeding, Outcome Unknown) from the Home Range should be more correct. Up to now the outcome logic that the SRMS has been working with was that used for the BTO’s Nest Record Scheme, where a separate Visit Logs gets created for each breeding attempt at a nest in a given year. For SRMS Online our Visit Logs operate at the Home Range level where it is possible to have multiple alternative nest sites and multiple breeding attempts in a given year. The outcome logic now computes a logical outcome for a Home Range based on the monitoring at multiple Nest Sites and successive breeding attempts.

• Users are able to quickly see on ‘Map View’ where visit data have already been added to locations for the current breeding season. Nest Site and Observation Sites on the map show with a green fill where data from at least one visit have been added. This will be really helpful for users working in collaboration with other raptor workers across shared locations to see whether any visit data has already been added. For users overseeing an ‘operating group’ account with multiple data contributors across a large area, this functionality may help them with coordination of monitoring to ensure the known Home Ranges are getting monitored and reported on.

Access historic raptor monitoring data

• Users can now access historic data held on the SRMS Legacy Data Portal (the portal through which SRMS data are currently shared with SRMS partners) through a range of reports:
o Via the ‘Reports’ menu in their individual account users will be able to retrieve all their historic records held by the SRMS from the SRMS Legacy Data Portal, based on their name appearing in submissions received at the Scheme from 2003 onwards.
o If users are a SRSG branch chair or Species Coordinator they will be able to retrieve all the historic records held by the SRMS from the Legacy Data Portal for the SRMS sub-region(s) and species that users oversee via the ‘Reports’ menu when they are ‘operating as’ the relevant group account. These records are not limited to SRSG submissions and can ONLY be used by SRSG in line with the SRMS Data Sharing & Use Policy.

Improvements to Manage Permissions

• Permissions set at Nest Site level automatically propagate to Home Range. Previously sharing locations with other SRMS Online users has been an onerous task as users have had to share both Nest Sites/Observations Sites separately to the overarching SRMS Home Ranges. Now when users edit the sharing settings on either a Nest Site or Observation Site these will automatically propagate to the SRMS Home Range location type.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug in ‘Explore Visit Data’ that was preventing multiple locations being searched on simultaneously. Previously, where multiple locations were being searched on simultaneously no results were being returned.

13th July 2022

  • Loading of sites on Map View has significantly sped up. Users with access to lots of locations are likely to have experienced a significant delay while waiting for locations to load on their map. Locations should now appear almost instantaneously.

Improvements to data entry in the Visit Logs

  • Fixed a bug that was preventing users saving visits with ‘+’ values in the ‘Fledged’ field – The consequence of this bug was that users were not being able to have the number of young fledged exceeding the numbers of young recorded on earlier visits. Users can now successfully save values with ‘+’ in the ‘Fledged’ field without saving being prevented.
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing users successfully saving edits to data in visit rows where no specific Visit Location (Nest Site or Observations Site) had been selected – In scenarios where no Visit Location had been selected in the ‘Visit Location’ field on a visit row (e.g. perhaps where activity within the Home Range had not yet been pinned down to a particular Nest Site) the Visit Location was being automatically populated with ‘unremembered location’. Users should find that the Visit Location is now displaying as an empty field and that they can successfully save and edit Visit Data in these rows.

Improvements to Location Management

  • Selecting a Species upon site creation has been made mandatory – On some occasions it was apparent that users were neglecting to select a species as they were creating locations (Nest Sites & Observations Sites) in either Map View or List View and as a consequence SRMS Home Range codes were not auto-generating successfully.
  • Added a Home Range field to the ‘View by locations’ List View – Many users have understandably struggled with reconciling their own user-defined coding systems for locations with the SRMS Home Range coding system implemented by SRMS. To improve this, users can now see the SRMS Home Range code in a column alongside user codes in the ‘View by locations’ List View.
  • In addition to the user defined location code and name displayed when you click on a location in Map View, the SRMS Home Range code is now also displayed – In conjunction with the above improvement to List View this will help users more readily understand SRMS Home Range code assignment.
  • Nest Sites & Observation Sites displaying differently in Map View – This will allow users to more readily distinguish between these two different location types. Nest Sites continue to be shown in orange while Observation Sites are shown in blue.

15th March 2022

Ability to capture “Nest Sites not Visited”

Users are now able to easily let us know when they have not been able to check any Nest Sites that they would usually would monitor. In the ‘Visit Data’ menu there is a menu item called ‘Nest Sites Not Visited’. This brings up a list of all the Nest Site locations the user has access to and they are able to select from the drop-down menu in the “Visited/Not Visited” column to let us know when they have not visited a particular Nest Site. There is also a button to access this same area from within each Visit Log, so if there are some particular known Nest Sites within a Home Range that they have not managed to check in a given year then they can let us know.

9th March 2022

Improvement to Add Visit/Explore Visit Data

  • Users will now be able to see their own user location codes and names appearing in the “Add Visit/Explore Visit Data” area, which will make it significantly easier for them to retrieve started Visit Logs to add second and subsequent visits during the breeding season.
    Many users (particularly those monitoring many Home Ranges) were understandably frustrated by the fact that previously the only locational details listed were the SRMS Home Range Codes, rather than the user location names and codes familiar to them.

1st March 2022

Improvements to data entry in the Visit Logs

  • A new field called “Occupancy” – This allows users to capture the Occupancy status on each visit. The drop-down menu is the equivalent to what the SRMS spreadsheet has offered previously.
  • A new field called ‘Fledged’ – This allows users to easily capture the number of young known to have fledged.
    Up to now users have been encouraged to use a ‘Young near nest’ ‘NN’ status code instead.
  • A new status code called ‘Site unused – no birds present’ SZ – This code features in the ‘No Breeding’ section of the drop-down menu. This code can be used as a ‘finishing code’ on the last visit which should ensure the outcome of the breeding attempt is considered as ‘No breeding’.
    Up to now many records have been considered ‘unfinished’ by the system as the NS ‘No signs and no birds’ code alone, has not been enough to trigger a ‘No breeding’ outcome.
  • A new status code called ‘Birds on Territory’ BS – This code features in the Territory section of the drop-down menu. This code can be used to record birds seen at the Home Range level (which aren’t necessarily exhibiting any particular behaviours such as displaying), where a Nest Site may yet to be found.
    Several users identified scenarios where this new status code would be valuable.

Improvements to Location Management

  • Extend editing ability on Locations to all users with access to those locations – For pre-loaded locations ONLY (i.e. any locations that the SRMS pre-loaded to SRMS Online on behalf of users as part of their initial account setup) we have extended the ability to edit locations to all users with access to that location.
  • Added a number of fields to the Location Management List View, when “viewing by locations” – We have added (1) Primary Habitat, (2) Secondary Habitat, (3) Nest Type, (4) Nest Site to this view. These were all bread-and-butter fields on the SRMS spreadsheet. When the SRMS undertook to pre-load locations for users in some cases the information was incomplete or there was conflicting information for these fields supplied across the years. By making these details visible in List View it should be easy for users to see this information at a glance without having to open each location separately to see what might need updating.
  • Added a ‘Visibility’ field to the Location Management List View – Allows users to see at a glance who else has access to the same locations and to allow account Deputies within ‘operating group’ accounts to manage location access more straightforwardly.
  • Fixed a bug that was causing 100m x 100m square Nest Sites to deform when dragged – Users can now more easily update the position of locations by dragging them on the map without fear of the square shape being lost.
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing the “Define by Nest Point” button appearing on pre-loaded 100m x 100m locations – Users wishing to do so can more easily update the resolution of 100m x 100m square locations to a point location should they wish to do so, with the benefit of background imagery.
  • Fixed a bug that was causing the 5th &10th digits in 10-figure grid references of locations created via List View to change upon saving.
  • Improved display of location labels in Map View – Labels on the map should now be easier for users to read. Text is larger and white text is buffered with black to ensure that they stand out irrespective of the background mapping or imagery layer.

Standard reports

  • We have made available the first such report. This is a report that converts SRMS Online data input into an annual summary compatible with the previous SRMS spreadsheet. As visit logs are updated on SRMS Online this report should refresh with the latest information.

28th April 2021

  • New Effort Recording area – users can now record their monitoring effort within their Study Area(s) or Raptor Patch(es) which will help the SRMS maximise the value of their data to produce trends in breeding numbers at local, regional and national scales. All SRMS Online users are required to complete an annual summary of their effort each breeding season for each Study Area/Raptor Patch that they monitor. Users can also choose to complete a daily summary of their effort following every visit, which provides the SRMS with more valuable detail on their effort.
  • New ‘Observation Site’ button – users can now add ‘Observation Site’ locations directly via Map View as could already be done for ‘Nest Site’ and ‘Study Area’ location types.
  • Handy ‘Find by Nest Site’ button when you are adding Nest Sites or Observation Sites via Map View or List View – users are now able to more easily add locations to an existing SRMS Home Range by using this button to search for the relevant SRMS Home Range Code, based on their own Nest Site location code and names.
  • Mouse curser coordinates displaying in Map View – as users move their curser around the map they will now see the mouse coordinates (i.e. grid ref and latitude/longitude) displaying in the bottom left-hand corner. They can choose to turn this off by unticking the ‘Mouse Coordinates’ box under ‘Display’ in the Location Tools panel to the left of the map.
  • Easier to handle casual records from yourself of others –  ‘casual’ is now listed as an Observation Type in the Visit Log. If users are just passing through their Study Area on a non-official monitoring visit or perhaps receive useful information from somebody else which adds to the picture of what is going on at a particular Home Range then they are likely to want to select ‘Casual’ from the Observation Type drop-down as they input data in the relevant visit row. If the data are from a third party (e.g. a member of the public or a landowner) then users are now able to capture ‘Third Party’ from the Initials drop-down. Users should content themselves that the third party concerned would be happy for their data to be passed onto the SRMS and used in line with our SRMS Data Sharing & Use Policy.
  • New Pair Details tab – if users are monitoring a pair of birds that are individually identifiable, they are able to use this new tab to capture their details.
  • Toggling map layers when creating locations ‘on the fly’ – previously users could only toggle between the different map layers (Bing Aerial Map, OpenStreetMap, Ordnance Survey Map) when in Map View. Users can now access all three layers as they create locations ‘on the fly’ while inputting data to a Visit Log.
  • ‘Location groups’ has been re-named ‘SRMS Home Ranges’ in List View – whereas before in List View users could view by ‘Locations’ or ‘Location Groups’ you can now view by ‘Locations’ or ‘SRMS Home Ranges’.
  • ‘Edit geometry’ button in Map View has been re-named ‘Edit positioning’ in Map View – whereas before in Map View users could ‘Edit geometry’ you can now ‘Edit positioning’, which is a more user-friendly term.
  • When creating a new Observation Site via List View users are now given the chance to link to existing SRMS Home Ranges – previously a bug meant that the system was creating a new SRMS Home Range every time a new Observation Site was created and users were not given the chance to link to an existing Home Range.