We’ve launched a new Cartographer web site! Here’s a quick guide of what you need to know:

New Site Layout

The new web site has a familiar layout with a couple of refinements:

Here are some things to look out for:

• Main Menu

The main navigation menu is to the left of the page. It has the same links to survey forms and maps as on the old site, but now they’re organised by project, a new concept that we’ll talk about below.

• Breadcrumb Bar

There are a lot of web pages in Cartographer! To make sure you never get lost, we’ve added this breadcrumb bar that shows where you are in the site at all times (a bit like the folders on the hard drive of your computer).

• Workspace Switcher

Lots of Cartographer users are members of several workspaces belonging to different companies/organizations. The workspace bar at the very left of the page lets you switch back and forth simply by clicking the company logos.

• Project Cards

We’ve organized the survey forms and maps in your workspace into projects and given each one a card on your workspace home screen. This makes it easier to find your data. Read more about projects below.

• Add Survey Buttons

We’ve replaced the “Add Survey” button with a clearer system of plus (“+”) buttons on the project cards. Click any of these buttons to add a survey of the corresponding type. Plus buttons also appear if you hover your mouse over the main menu. They always mean “add”, no matter where you see them!

• Account Menu

We’ve grouped menu items related to your account into a special menu at the top left of the page. Click this button to view/edit your account details, access our online help site, and sign out of your account.

• Feedback Button

We’re trying to turn this new web site into the best experience possible for all Cartographer users. Your feedback is enormously valuable for making this happen! Click the blue feedback button in the bottom right to send us a message if you have any ideas, you encounter a bug, or if you simply want to let us know how we’re doing.

Project and Teams

The two biggest new features in Cartographer are called projects and teams. Let’s deal with each separately:

Projects

Projects are a new tool for organizing the pages and people within a workspace. A workspace can contain one or more projects, represented by cards on its home page. Here’s an example card:

You can click Surveys to view the list of water quality surveys collected so far, Map to view the map, the plus (+) button to add a new survey, or the cog button to edit project settings. Some of these links and buttons appear and disappear based on your role in the project (for example, only project coordinators can access settings).

Project Roles

Projects serve to simplify the way we specify the permissions people have on Cartographer. Each member of a project can have one of four roles:

• Project Members - can view data in the project;
• Project Surveyors - can contribute new data;
• Project Approvers - can approve other members’ contributions;
• Project Coordinators - can invite new people and edit project settings.

The role a person has in a project applies to all of the survey forms and maps inside it. Simply change the role to change what they can do.

Teams

Projects can represent real-world initiatives of any scale, from local restorations to national citizen science movements. In larger projects, it’s common to split their membership up into semi-autonomous groups or hubs. This is where Cartographer Teams come in.

“Teams” is a feature that can be enabled on a project-by-project basis. Multi-team projects have additional settings screens allowing coordinators to set up teams and assign team memberships.

Team Roles

Each team member is given one of four roles that mirror the project roles above:

• Team Members - can view data created by the team;
• Team Surveyors - can contribute new data on behalf of the team;
• Team Approvers - can approve other members’ contributions (from their own teams only);
• Team Coordinators - can invite new people to the team and edit team settings.

These roles allow the team to operate autonomously without affecting other teams in the project.

Collaborative Surveys are now Multi-Team Projects

Most projects on Cartographer are single-team. However, a few of the larger citizen science projects have teams enabled. These include:

If you’re a member of one of these projects, be aware that we’ve moved some things around. See our help page entitled Where Did My Data Go? for more information.

Trying the New Site

We’re rolling the new web site out to users workspace-by-workspace. You may, in fact, already be using it (the bar of icons down the left of the page is the giveaway). If not, you should see a yellow box like the one below at the top of your workspace home page:

Click the Check it out now! link, or click below, to try it out. We think you’ll like it!