NPGS GRIN-Global News & Training Page


SMTA - NPGS

Beginning January 1, 2024, the NPGS will be implementing new procedures for handling incoming international requests.

On November 29, NPGS held a webinar to review these changes. Please refer to the SMTA section on this site's User Documentation page for the video from that session and SMTA-related documents. See http://grin-global.org/userdocs.htm#smta

2024 - Q & A Series

Thursdays
(topics/dates TBD)
60 minute GRIN-Global ZOOM sessions typically held on Thursdays, 2:00 PM Eastern. All are welcome. Please suggest topics for consideration to marty.reisinger@usda.gov

ZOOM DIRECTIONS

Unless notified, all Q&As and webinars will be using ZOOM with the following:
https://www.zoomgov.com/my/gringlobal

Meeting ID: 160 3144 7305

Audio If you prefer using the phone, use ZOOM's call back feature or dial by your location:
+1 669 254 5252 US (San Jose)
+1 646 828 7666 US (New York)

Employee Entrance / Exit Checklist

A new employee joining your GG team? Or someone leaving soon? We have a brief list of actions that pertain to GG for both scenarios. These actions are easy to forget, hence the list - check it out!

New NPGS staff should also review this brief overview of the GRIN-Global environment. check it out!

NPGS sites: Wondering if there is a more efficient way in GG? Consider having customized training at your "doorstep." Contact Marty to set up ZOOM sessions to meet the needs of your site - address new staff learning needs, common GG hurdles, ...

2023 - Q & A Series

Join us in 2023 for one or many of the Q & A sessions that are held on Thursdays, 2:00 PM Eastern. Each session is typically an overview of a topic followed by a forum discussion. Staff new and old who use the Curator Tool in their daily work will find the sessions useful.

Send emails to marty.reisinger @ usda.gov to suggest topics or to be included in his Q&A email list. Note: Sessions are typically recorded and made available later on this page. Also, contact Marty if your NPGS site would like to schedule a webinar for specific GG questions.

Intro to GG & the Curator Tool Series

A GRIN-Global / Curator Tool 5-part series began on February 22. After each session, participants were expected to complete a "homework" exercise. You can complete this series on your own - the video recordings and exercises are on the Video page https://www.grin-global.org/videos.htm

To practice completing the exercises, participants should have a TRAINING database Curator Tool account set up. (This is not the same as the NPGSWEB database.) Please contact the GG database administrator, Benjamin Haag if you need accounts. Contact marty.reisinger@usda.gov Marty Reisinger if you have any questions about the training exercises.


NPGS Advisory Committee

Minutes

NPGS Advisory Committee

Notes

AdCom Priorities Brainstorming Session

April 11 & 25, 2023
In two sessions in April, the AdCom brainstormed with the goal of identifying needs and generating ideas that if acted on would improve NPGS effectiveness.

Previous Q & A Topics

(In reverse chronological order)

GGCE Overview

October 17, 2023 GRIN-Global Community Edition ("GGCE") is the new genebank information management system being designed and developed by the Crop Trust. In this overview, we do a quick overview of GGCE and compare its similarities and differences with GG.

Dynamic Queries

July 27, 2023 Super Coops – CT users included in the manage_cooperators permission group can edit any Cooperator or Cooperator-Map record. We discussed the "how to's" and other considerations, as well as how to upsadte a site's page with current curator information.

Attachments

July 13, 2023 In the review of three broadly-defined groups of inventory: traditional, seasonal, and virtual, we focused on the new Virtual Inventory feature that is being tested and considered.

Dynamic Queries

June 1, 2023 We discussed some best practices when working with Dynamic Queries. Participants shared and explained some of their favorites.

Attachments

May 25, 2023 We reviewed attachments and the Attachment Wizard. (An attachment is a file or link associated with a GG record.) New users and folks who haven't made any attachments for awhile should find this session helpful.

Inventory: Traditional, Seasonal, or Virtual?

May 4, 2023

 We reviewed how inventory is currently being handled by the Public Website and also examined the "Virtual Inventory" feature that is under current development.

SQL 102-Beyond the Basics

March 30, 2023 A continuation of the SQL Basics session held on March 2. This session explained how to use the dumpsql tool to generate SQL, especially when working with JOINs and multiple tables.

Visibility & Availability

March 23, 2023 Various messages display on the Search Results page depending on the availability of the inventory. This session explained how these messages originate.

Inventory - Review of the Availability Trigger

March 16, 2023 Inventory is probably the most important table in GRIN-Global. Today's session focused on the current availabilty trigger and the relationship between an Inventory Maintenance Policy and inventory records.

Overview of GGCE

March 9, 2023

We discussed the Crop Trust's exciting new GG Community Edition. A brief demo was given.

SQL Basics - 101

March 2, 2023

SQL queries can be submiited via the Public Website interface and the query results can then be easily extracted to Excel for further analysis. Using SQL, you can quickly determine database contents and information. In today’s session, we provided a good foundation on SQL basics. Sometime soon (date undecided), we’ll provide a follow-up Q&A session with more advanced topics.

Adding Crop Observations (Part 3)

Feb. 23, 2023

Intro & demo on adding crop observations. This session is a follow-up to the first two Q&A Observations sessions held on February 2 and February 16.

Adding Crop Observations (Part 2)

Feb. 16, 2023

Intro & demo on adding crop observations. This session is a follow-up to the first Observations Q&A session held on Feb.2

USDA Pecan Database

Feb. 9, 2023

Ellen Provin at Brownwood will demo their application used in the Pecan orchard for managing many functions, such as tracking the history of each tree, providing summary observation data, and incorporating fieldbooks via tablets.

Adding Crop Observations (Part 1)

Feb. 2, 2023

Intro & demo on adding crop observations.

What's New? (with GRIN-Global)

Jan. 26, 2023

Recent changes to GG server features and GG project pages were briefly reviewed. An open forum and participant suggestions for GG.

Orders/Shipping: FAQs & Best Practices

Jan. 10 & 12, 2023

We discussed steps that are taken or could be taken to improve requester communications related to their order's status & tracking.

Updating Site Details

Nov. 3 2022

"Sites" - How do you update your site's PW details page? These and other site-related questions were answered in this week's session. Several related files are available:

Crop Wild Relatives & Mapping Application

August 11, 2022

Dan Carver demoed locating Crop Wild Relatives with a web mapping application. This resource showcases data from Khoury and Carver et al. (2020) and was developed in collaboration with the USDA-ARS Partnerships for Data Innovations.

Public Website Wish List

August 11, 2022

Marty Reisinger demonstrated some of the Public Website's Wish List changes being made in the next server release.

Seasonal Availability

July 14, 2022

Reviewed the recently released Seasonal Availability feature. Primarily used by clonal crops, with this new feature it is possible to specify a range of dates, starting and ending, to restrict PW distributions for a given form (cuttings, leaves, pollen, etc.)

"smile"

July 7, 2022

Cullen McGovern demonstrated the "smile" tool he has been developing. smile enables users to access data, create reports, barcodes, etc. using the GRIN-Global database, directly from a browser.

Attachment Wizard - What's New?

May 17, 2022

Marty Reisinger reviewed the changes implemented since the prior attachment wizard. Related reference links:

Using Dynamic Folders to Find Stuff

February 10, 2022

Marty reviewed the basics of the Curator Tools' Dynamic Folders capability.

Recording Citations

May 3, 2021

NPGS's taxonomist, Melanie Schori, explained how to properly create citations and literature references in GRIN-Global.

Joining Cooperator Records

March 11, 2021

Marty demo'd how to associate multiple cooperator records for the same cooperator when addresses are different.