Everyone who works with the plants

Logging day to day

This is the screen that decides whether a trial survives contact with a busy week. If it is slow, people stop using it, and a trial with gaps is not a trial.

Which is why the Log tab is quiet: no timeline, no summary panel, just one line saying the stage, the week and where the plants are, and then + New entry. The timeline is on Setup and Results, where the shape of the trial is the point. On a phone the fastest way here is the orange Log button in the middle of the bottom bar.

Log tab → + New entry, on a phone.

1Already filled in. Today's date and the stage the trial is in. Tap change only when you are logging something from yesterday.
2Which cultivar. Tap one. A line underneath says where you are — "Cultivar 2 of 5, 3 still to log after this one" — and a second save button, Save, then log the next cultivar, walks you through the whole screen without reopening the form. On the last one that button disappears, because there is nothing left to chain to.
3The photo. Full width because it is the most valuable thing in the record. Your phone offers the camera or the camera roll, and you can pick several at once. Each one is stamped with cultivar, treatment and date automatically, so you never have to name a file.
4Whatever this trial measures at this stage. Only the metrics section 4 says belong here — nothing else is asked of you. Change the stage and the measurements change with it.
5Notes. Always here, always optional.

Sprays and plant work

This is a sits at the top of the sheet, above everything else, because it decides which fields the middle of the form shows. Choosing it last meant filling in an observation and then discovering you wanted a spray record.

Same form, different middle section. A spray records products, rate, method, target, volume and REI; plant work records what was done — pinch, top, defoliate, strip — and the detail. Neither counts as a data day, because a spray is not a measurement.

Moving plants a stage

It is at the bottom of the log, not the top. The big button at the top of a running trial is + Log entry, because that is what you are here to do most days. Moving a stage happens about five times in a trial's life, so it sits at the far end of the log where you cannot hit it on your way past.

The bar at the top of the Log tab.

1Where the trial is — week and day, counted from the moment Start was pressed.
2Move to the next stage, at the bottom of the log. Press it when the plants have actually moved; you confirm how many carried over, which is where losses get captured without anyone filling in a cull form. The button beside it undoes a move made by mistake.
3The stages, drawn to their planned length. Tap any one to filter the log to it.
4Today. If the marker is well past where it should be, the trial is running long.

If you lose signal

Keep going. Entries are written to the device immediately and sync when you are back in range. The footer says Offline — saved on this device while that is true. The one thing it will not do is save something your role is not allowed to change — that says so plainly rather than pretending.