OCHRE Wiki - Project Start-up Checklist

Project Start-up Checklist

By Sandra Schloen, December 2017

(For Project Administrators)

New OCHRE projects are set up in consultation with the OCHRE Data Service. A new project is provided with a Project Administrator user account which has full access to the OCHRE project. The purpose of this checklist is to guide a new project administrator through the steps needed to successfully get up and running in OCHRE.

By convention, new project setup will include:

Project Name and Abbreviation; these cannot be changed by project personnel.
A Project staff hierarchy in the Persons category containing the Person item of the project administrator. This person will also be accessible under the Users category, and will be shown there with full Admin privileges.
A stub Project taxonomy hierarchy within the Taxonomy category.

Step 1: Project Preferences

After logging into the project, pause long enough to add a project Description on the Information tab of the Project pane.

Next, check out the Project Preferences and adjust them if necessary.

Typically you will want to Keep project data private at this stage, publishing it as appropriate.
Projects with a lot of textual content (e.g. projects that are philology based and which are creating text editions) will want to visit the Fonts tab to make sure that appropriate fonts will be used for display
Set date and bibliography format options.
If you expect to be using OCHRE in offline mode (e.g. an archaeological project using OCHRE in the field), be sure to check on the Allow offline use option.

Project Preferences

Step 2: Users

In the Persons & Organizations category you will find a Project staff (or equivalent) hierarchy.
- If there is the possibility that any of your project staff already exist in the OCHRE database as persons, search for them and checklist-list them into your Project staff hierarchy. In the Linked items pane, be sure to pick the OCHRE (Online Cultural and Historical Research Environment) project as the Project of link target and the Persons & Organizations category as the Category of link target.

Note that the Linked Items Find-item-by-Name search is case sensitive. If you find the needed Person, switch to the Checklist Display format, select the required Person in the Query Results list, and use the checklist-link button highlighted above to insert the item at the selected context in the navigation pane.

Otherwise, add new Users, as needed, to the Project staff hierarchy, inserting new Person items in the usual way.
- Note the location of the Insert and Refresh buttons, highlighted below.

- With the Project staff hierarchy selected in the navigation pane, insert new Person items (as "current person" Type), entering appropriate information for each using a consistent format (e.g. “Last name, First name” as Display name).
- Attach each Person’s institutional affiliation by linking in the appropriate Organization using the Link Manager. If the represented Organization(s) do not yet exist, insert a new hierarchy in the Persons category and go ahead and create new organizations, as needed. Link them to the Person items appropriately.
- DON'T FORGET: If the Person items being added represent people that will also be active OCHRE users, indicate that these Person items represent Users by checking the box “Authorized user.”
- Be sure to include an email address for each User, so that they can be contacted by OCHRE support staff if needed.
- Sort the list of Persons using the Alphabetical Sort option under Preferences.

Sort a list of items in a heading or hierarchy

Open the Users category by expanding that branch of the Categories list. Each of the authorized users should appear in the list of Users. (Refresh the Users category, if needed, to pick up new Person-Users added.)
- Begin by clicking on your own user account, and use this opportunity to Change password.

PLEASE NOTE! THE ORDER OF OPERATIONS IS IMPORTANT!

- For each new User:
  - Assign a unique Username and click Activate account. Click Reset password to assign the username as the default starting password. To safeguard your project data, be sure to stress to all users that they should change their password to something more secure when they first log in.
  - Assign the appropriate level of user access to each of the project’s categories. [Use Shift-click in a column to assign the same access provided by that column to all categories.] Click Update user privileges to make the access specifications effective.
  - Note that not all Persons need to become Users. Only active project staff that currently need access to project data should be made Users. Other Person items are available so that their observations (current or historical) can be attributed to them, but they may not need access to the project data.
  - If an email address was provided on the Person item, feel free to customize and send OCHRE's Welcome letter using the Welcome User option.

Step 3: Create a Project Taxonomy

Under the Taxonomy category, you will find the Project taxonomy that was initialized by the OCHRE Data Service on setup.

Clone or copy in existing taxonomy branches from the OCHRE master project, or create your own.
As you create your own variables and values, be sure to keep your Values and Variables categories organized as these categories represent the master lists of the project-specific variables and values you create.
Copy or clone in the Events variable from the OCHRE master project (typically copied in at the highest level of the taxonomy) in order to activate Event processing. You can copy in existing Events values from the OCHRE taxonomy, or create your own (or both).

To re-use values, and by implication to align properties to some extent from other projects, in particular the master OCHRE project, follow these steps to find and link the desired properties.

To find the value Coin, for example:

Select one instance from the list of Query Results (if any). Generally, you will want to use the instance that does not have another project's prefix; this will be the generic instance in the OCHRE master project. Flip the Display format to the Checklist option, then check ON the instance you wish to select.

From an appropriate context in your project's Taxonomy (that is, the context in which you wish to insert the new item), use the Check-Link tool on the tool bar to insert the checked item into the taxonomy.

Repeat as necessary! While this process requires a little extra time to set up, there is great collaborative value in sharing common properties with other projects, and also makes moot the need for Thesaurus entries for these items (we are reusing the very same item, so it does not have anything to which it needs to be made equivalent).

Step 4: Create Predefinitions

Under the Predefinitions category, create predefinitions based on your project’s taxonomy to provide templates and default values for data entry.

Step 5: Create a Project Chronology

Under the Periods category, create a hierarchy for detailing your project’s chronology (or borrow one from another project).

Step 6: Create Locations & Objects

Begin by building the contextual framework for your locations and objects. For an archaeological project this typically represents your areas of excavation (Area, Field, etc.) and the units of excavation therein (Locus, Unit, Layer, Bucket, Pail, etc.)
- Describe those location and object items using the Predefinitions as data entry templates.
- Assign Periods to these items, as appropriate, using period items defined in your project chronology.

Step 7: Add Resources

Under the Resources category create hierarchies in which to organize your project’s images, PDFs, etc.

If you have existing collections of resources, consult with the OCHRE Data Service regarding the possibility of importing large batches of external files. If the names of the external files contain the names of corresponding OCHRE items, then links from the item to the resource can be made on import. For example, a photo of “Item 101” can be automatically linked to the item on import if its file name contains the item name (e.g. “Item 101.jpg”, “Item 101 a.jpg”, Item 101_notes.pdf, etc.).

Check out these other wiki articles on Importing resources and on using the Drag and Drop Import option to insert smaller batches of images.

Step 8: Set up Geospatially-Enabled OCHRE (if applicable)

We recommend that you review the information available on Mapping Tools to get a general sense of what is involved in setting up Geospatially-Enabled OCHRE (GEO). You may also want to consult with the OCHRE Data Service specialists before beginning this step.

Specifically, you will want to:

Initialize the GEO features on the computers running OCHRE. Do this from your User account.
Create and link a basemap to the Resources Inbox.
Try out Map Navigation View.

Step 9: Configure Text Settings (if applicable)

Projects that are doing philology will want to initialize additional settings.

On the Project, Preferences, Tools page, link in any dictionaries or writing systems that are relevant for your project. Not only does this make them available for automatically importing texts, but it also helps speed up the loading of texts for Views and other kinds of analysis.

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