CropSignal News

We have deployed the same sharing feature currently used for dashboards to the webmark and calendar event features. Users can share webmarks and calendar events to any users in the group they belong to (assuming they are permitted). A share button appears in the Webmarks index page (as well as the edit pages for webmarks and events) where a user can select other users or entire groups to share with.

We have added a new widget type to Pivot widgets which simulates pivot tables, but makes the statistical metadata visible.  GDA collects attributes about the source of statistical information (including how the source identifies the year, the date, source URL, file info, rows and columns — it varies depending on the source).  To view it, click the Metadata tab on the pivot widget.  This will present the data as a table (though without pivoting, aggregation or custom variables).  Each row will have an expand button in the first column which, when clicked, will show the relevant metadata.

Dashboards can now be shared in ‘editable’ mode in addition to the previous ‘read-only’ mode.  As the dashboard owner, you can elect to make the dashboard editable to users or groups that you share it with, or to make it read-only.  If it is editable, users you share it with may edit the contents of your dashboard, e.g. resize widgets, add widgets, delete widgets or change widget settings.

Additionally, you can make a dashboard re-shareable, that is you give permission to people you share with to also re-share that dashboard directly with other users.

In the dashboard share dialog box, you can find checkboxes for these settings.

Dashboards can now be manually ordered from the index page.  You can click the little “grab” icon in the first column and drag-and-drop dashboards into the desired order.  Once completed, make sure you click the ‘Save Order’ button to preserve the order on your account.  You can also sort the dashboards by the columns in the table (e.g. name, created), but if you do that, you cannot manually re-order the columns without refreshing the page.

We have added new variables that estimate relative crop conditions using crop-specific MODIS NDVI data.  The variables utilize historical accumulated NDVI (from a given start date) to estimate the relative condition between years over time.

The variables are available under the “GDA Crop NDVI” topic as “NDVI Condition” variables.  Twelve variables exist, one for each accumulation start month.  We suggest using the “MM-DD (approx)” temporal format setting to see the data year-over-year.

The methodology can be found here.

We have revised the way GDD-derived crop stages are labeled as plotbands on crop-specific GDD charts from the Weather Topic.  If only one year, location, and crop are selected, the GDD stages are displayed along the X-axis (time).  If more than one location or year are selected than the GDD stages appear as plotbands on the Y-axis as before.

To build such a chart: Navigate to Weather topic, select a location and year.  Make sure to select a specific crop (not ‘Non-crop-specific weather’), the appropriate months, the WMO GSOD source and either Accum GDD or Accum Precipitation (or both) from the variables dropdown under the ‘Crop specific variables’ header.  If using a Monthly temporal period, make sure the Temporal Format is ‘Month separated from year’.  If using a Weekly temporal period, make sure to use the Temporal Format ‘Week Ending Date (approx) separated from year.

The option to choose what value is used to label features on maps has been revised into a dropdown list.  Also, an “Off” option has been added which, if selected, removes all labels from the map.

The copy widget function on the dashboard view page has been expanded to allow widgets to be duplicated on the current dashboard (in addition to copying onto another dashboard that already existed).

To duplicate a widget, click the “Copy widget” button on the widget toolbar (see green circle in screenshot).  The dialog box now has a an option to duplicate it on the current dashboard, or to select another dashboard (or create new dashboard) to copy onto.

If you select to copy on the existing dashboard, the copy will appear right after the source widget.  The dashboard will reload.

You can now globally enable data labels (show each point’s data value on chart) for all series on the chart with a single setting.  The toggle setting is named “Labels” and appears in the chart toolbar.

Column sorting changes on pivot tables are now preserved in the widget settings on CropSignal.  (Previously, changes to sorting weren’t preserved).  This is helpful for exporting PNG renderings of widgets with custom column sorting.

You can change the column sorting by clicking on the column header of the column you’d like to sort.  Click again to change the sort order from ascending to descending or vice versa.

Hold the shift key while clicking column titles to perform multi-column sorts.