Decision support
Decision support may not be enabled on your system.
Decision support informs you of relevant events in your fields. You can define these events yourself. It is built around rules like this:
When fields with crop variety Pinot Noir have less than 6000kg/ha accumulated biomass at 8 weeks, recommend extra fertilizer.
After you have defined the rules, the system will check the rules regularly and create a alert for an individual field, when that rule first applies. The alerts will appear in the portal, where you can then communicate with workers in the field about the actions they need to take. The workers will be informed via WhatsApp.
User roles
Within the Decision Support subsystem we discern between these roles:
- clientAdmins: Enables all of decision support. Shows menus Field alerts, Field actions, and Rules
- Expert: Enables decision support configuration. Shows Rules menu
- DecisionSupport: Enables decision support use. Shows menus Field alerts and Field actions
Workers in the field that receive Whatsapp messages can be regular Fieldlook 5 user and don't need any of these Decision Support roles.
Main workflow
These are the steps needed to work with the system:
The steps will now be described in more detail.
Register worker phone numbers
The system uses Whatsapp to communicate with workers in the field. So the first step is to enter a phone number for each worker.
A worker can enter their own phone number in the "Profile and settings" sidebar.
It's also possible to send a list of phone numbers (each associated with an email address) to your contact at eLEAF, and we will enter them in the system. A phone number should be in the internationally standard form of a country code and a national number, preceded by "+", for example: +31612345678.
Set up alerts and actions
Before you can create rules, you have to specify the alerts and actions they are based on. You can do so on the second and third tabs of the Rules page.
You have to do this only once, but you can always make changes later, if needed.
Alerts are the suggestions made by the system, and you can define them yourself. You can specify the groups of workers that are involved in this kind of alert. Each rule is linked to a specific alert.
Alert type- a category of alerts. Everything related to "Fertilization", for example.
Alert- a specification of a alert type, like "Precision fertilization required" or "Biostimulant required". It contains the groups of workers that are involved in the field actions based on this alert.
Actions are formed by the work that needs to be done to follow up on the alert. They are created by you and executed by a worker in the field. When you create an action for a field, you can add a description to make it even more specific.
Action type- a category of actions. Everything related to "Fertilization", for example.
Action- a specification of an action type, like "Apply precision fertilization" or "Apply a biostimulant".
Create rules
When the alerts and actions have been set up, you're ready to create rules. Each rule belongs to a alert, so first select a alert, them create a rule for it. You can do so on the first tab of the Rules page.
Click the "Try me!" button on a rule to check if the rule has the result you intended.
Check for field alerts regularly
Once field alerts have been automatically generated by the system, they appear on My Fieldlook.
Check this page daily or weekly, according to your needs.
Note: Once a field alert has been generated for a rule, it will not be generated again. Changing the rule after the rule has been changed will not have an effect on the fields that have already had a alert.
Field alert- an advice of the system to the customer for a specific field. It's generated by a background process when a recommentation rule fires.
On this page you can create an action for a worker that belongs to any of the groups specified in the alert.
Field action- is created manually by you to follow up on a field alert.
Field alerts are also shown on the Field detail page (only the ones of that field) and on the Field alerts page (the ones that belong to the selected farm).
Monitor how the actions are performed by the workers in the field
To check how the work is done by the workers in the field, you can check all pending actions. This can be done on the Field action page, but also shown on the Field detail page and on My Fieldlook.
If needed you can change the action, send files and images to the worker via Whatsapp, and mark the action as complete.
A field action can be in any of the following states
- Unassigned
- Planned
- Done
- Cancelled
- Past due date