Suggestions

[lacrosby]

George - glad to participate and to help take your software to a new level.

I now have 430 plants in my gardens and in IGP.

Here are two suggestions based on my experience to date.

The process of entering new plants is somewhat cumbersome, because part is entered in GA004 and part in GA027.  Would sure be nice if they could be consolidated into a single process.

I understand the concept of adding the plant to the database and then adding the detail as another step.  However, I am doing both at the same time, and would prevent lots of going back and forth and confusing myself - which is no longer hard to do at my advancing age.

I would like to see the report function greatly expanded.  I have all of this great information on my computer, but am limited in what I can take to the garden.  I would want the ability to organize my own reports, which may have differing detail depending on what I am wanting to accomplish in the garden at any given time.

I am using one of the canned reports, and am fooling the system by loading the things I want into the "color" field, because I have figured out that this is one field that does show up on that report.

I thought that maybe advanced reporting was built into the Query program, but have not found that yet.

Another great feature would be the ability to export all fields in the database into MS Excel or into another database program.  This would really give us the option of what and how to print reports.

Thanks for the opportunity to make suggestions.  Great software and look forward to making it even better.

Best regards to all,

Larry Crosby
USA

[ideasguy]

Thanks for detailing out your suggestions, Larry ? much appreciated.
I will deal with this one posting per each of your suggestions.

Suggestion No 1
The process of entering new plants is somewhat cumbersome, because part is entered in GA004 and part in GA027.  Would sure be nice if they could be consolidated into a single process.

As you know, you can add plants in a number of programs ?
The original program was GA004.
Then I developed GA022 (to give an easy access to the configurable data)
Next came GA027. The Amateur gardeners program
The latest offering is GA037. It is the equivalent of FG037 in Flower Genie.
GA037 is good for exploring the Master Database (hence it is valled the database explorer) but it can also do all the things you do with GA004.

GA027 is a bit different from the others, in that it is designed for easy add of plants whose names can be entered in the 4 botanical name elements:
Genus, Species, Sub species and Cultivar.
As you know, that covers the vast majority of our garden plants.

If the plant has a more copmplex name, you can still use GA027, in two steps.
Add what you can in its simple ADD screen.
Then EDIT the plant.
This takes you to the common EDIT screen, GA100S02 ? its used by ALL programs.
You have more fields in that screen, to accept things like Collector name, Author etc.

Having explained all that, there is one shortfall of GA027.
It?s the only one of the suite of programs which does not allow access to the Plant Profile screen GA100S36, or the Global editing suite of screens GA100S30 (3 screens).
Per your suggestion, I will have a look at GA027 and put a new Plant Profile button on the initial screen.
This will allow you to access GA100S36 (where you can work with the text fields) and from that, you can access the Global editing screens.

Will that do the job?

[ideasguy]

Suggestion No 2
I would like to see the report function greatly expanded. 

First, Ive extended the functionality of report FG034 in Flower Genie, for David of Higher Knowle Garden fame.
There are now a whole bank of check box option buttons ? very flexible.
I will shortly be adding the new options to the Ideas Genie equivalent ? GA034.

Ive been surprised that there has not been requests for additional reports before.
To all: Please give me a sample of anything you want, and I'll have a go at producing it for you. There's lots of room under that Reports tab on the menu!

Suggestion No 3
I have all of this great information on my computer, but am limited in what I can take to the garden.  I would want the ability to organize my own reports, which may have differing detail depending on what I am wanting to accomplish in the garden at any given time.

Ideas Genie Pro already has such functionality, so lets make sure all can use it.
First you use the Tasks Program GA047.

General tasks
If it?s a simple task, click the Add General button.
This is great for adding tasks quickly, and organizing them in priority order.
See Tutorial GA047 (83)
When you?ve added a task , you can print from this program.

Plant related tasks:
I spent many months developing another feature based on a model by Peter (England)
The new feature is accessed by clicking the Plant Related Tasks button (bottom RH region of initial screen of GA047)
See Tutorials GA047 (84), (85), (86) and (87)
Again, you can print off your tasks.

If you are planning tasks for Specimens using this feature, then you will see how this kind of task integrates with the work I did based on Peters model.
This requires that you have specimens, and create your task for a specimen in GA047.
Then, Use GA029.
Per Peter's specification, the Print button in that screen allows you to print an excellent page for taking to the greenhouse ? in his case to check and record germination of seeds, repotting etc.
The page is as near as I could get to the page Peter supplied. He informed me that he raises almost 200 varieties of plants from seed each year.
Ive extended the functionality to deal with any plant related task.

I don?t have any tutorials yet for GA029, but I would like to suggest classes for winter for this wonderful feature. Any interest members?
It will be based on Raising plants from seed, so a good time to get started.

[ideasguy]

Suggestion No 1
The process of entering new plants is somewhat cumbersome, because part is entered in GA004 and part in GA027.  Would sure be nice if they could be consolidated into a single process.

Ive updated GA027 to Version 22
Download it from the IG Pro downloads page.
You will now find a new Edit Profile button.
This will allow access to the core of the data, and from there you can get to Global editing

Double clicking on a plant in the list will take you to the same screen as before in this program.

This means you can do anything you need within any one of the programs which allow Add a plant.
Let me know if thats what you wanted Larry.