Cartographer supports a simple QA process to allow project officers to review and approve survey data submitted by other users.
Whenever a user saves a survey on Cartographer, they assign it a publication status from a small predefined list. The statuses and the typical paths between them are shown below:
Draft and Complete Statuses
Surveyors only have access to two of the five statuses on the flow chart above:
- They can use the draft status to save a survey before they have finished working on it.
- When they are done with the survey they save it with the complete status. This triggers a notification email to the workspace operator inviting a Project or Team Approver to review the content and approve it.
The status is set when the surveyor saves the survey using the Save button at the top right of the page:
Approved, Review, and Rejected Statuses
Project and Team Coordinators see a slightly expanded version of the Save modal giving them access to more options for saving the survey:
A survey administrator can load another surveyor’s completed surveys, look over it, and use the expanded options in their menu to re-save it with a new status depending on their appraisal:
- If the survey looks good, they can mark it as Approved. The survey form is locked preventing further changes, and a notification email is triggered back to the surveyor to thank them for their contribution.
- If there are issues with the data presented, the approver can mark the survey as In Review. Cartographer doesn’t generate any automated emails in this case — the approver should contact the surveyor directly and work with them to resolve the issues identified.
- If the survey admin and the surveyor cannot correct the issues with the survey, the approver can mark it as Rejected. This locks the survey form and superficially hides it on the survey list. Anyone can view rejected surveys by modifying the filters on the survey list page. See Browsing Surveys on the Web for more information.
Unapproving/Unrejecting Surveys
Surveys in the approved/rejected statuses are locked to prevent accidental updates. It is easy for a survey administrator to unlock a survey if it turns out further changes are necessary. The Save button changes to an Unapprove or Unreject button with options as follows:
Once the survey has been unapproved (or unrejected) it can be edited, reviewed, and re-approved (or re-rejected) as above.