The image above shows the primary areas of the application, namely:
A - Application Menu
B - Participant View
C - Status Bar
D - Document View
The following sections cover in detail what is shown in each application area, and how to use it.
When you open a participant in Collect, the participant view will display that participant's record. (To learn how to load a participant, see the section called “Opening Existing Participants” ).
The participant view is an organised 'tree view' of a participant record. The view is document-centric, with the documents organised into their respective study stages. (These stages have been organised from top to bottom in their required order of completion). You can click on a study stage to open it up and see what documents it contains.
The following sections explain all of the information that is presented in this view.
As you can see in the diagram, there are three 'levels' in the tree view. The top level is the participant themself. The second 'level' comprises the study stages into which the documents (third level) have been organised.
Each document is displayed adjacent to an icon that represents the status of the document. If you are unsure what the icon means then hold the mouse cursor over the document in question - a tooltip will be displayed containing the name of the document and its status. The following table describes the document icons
Further notes and comments about the document statuses:
No started - Document not yet started for the participant
Incomplete - Document saved as incomplete in the database.
Complete - Document saved as complete in the database.
Pending - Document is pending approval in the database. Not applicable if the study does not use the 'Review and Approve' workflow.
Approved - Document has been approved by the CSM. Not applicable if the study does not use the 'Review and Approve' workflow.
Rejected - Document has been rejected by the CSM. Not applicable if the study does not use the 'Review and Approve' workflow.
Locally incomplete - Document is stored locally as incomplete. Not applicable if 'Always online' mode is being used.
Ready To Submit - Document has been completed but is stored locally. Not applicable if 'Always online' mode is being used.
Locked - Document is locked and it is not possible to enter data for it.
The Document Status Filter allows the displayed Documents for the participant to be filtered by their status. By default the filter is set to 'All", so all Documents are displayed regardless of status. Changing this to a specific status will result in the Participant View tree being refreshed to only show Documents in the selected status. If a Study Stage contains no Documents in the selected status then it will be empty and will not be able to be expanded.
The image above displays the main features of the document view. The following sections will provide an overview of each feature and will label all controls for easy reference throughout the rest of the document.
The toolbar buttons available are as follows:
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The 'back' button.
Move back to the previous section (disabled if on the first section). Note that the same functionality is provided by the 'back' button at the bottom of the document window.
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The 'forward' button.
Move forward to the next section of the document. If the last section is currently displayed then the forward button changes to Save (or other equivalent action depending upon the document status); this will be indicated by arrow on the button changing from white to red, and the text on the forward button at the bottom of the document window changing to indicate what the action will be.
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The 'save incomplete' button.
Save the document as 'incomplete'. (See the section called “The 'Complete' and 'Incomplete' Work Flow Stages”for a discussion of the diffence between complete and incomplete documents).
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The 'print' button.
Print the document (see the section called “Printing documents” ).
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The 'missing code' button.
Apply missing code to section (see the section called “Auto fill section with missing code” ).
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The 'import' button.
Import data (see the section called “Import document contents from an external source” ).
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The 'close document' button.
Close the current document
This section of the view displays the name of the currently-open document, as well as the study stage to which it belongs.
If the document has been organised into multiple sections, the section control will appear here. You can click on this drop-down list box in order to view the document's sections and navigate between them allowing you to skip to a later section without going through all sections by using the forward or back buttons. Note that you will only be allowed to skip to sections that have been completed, so when data is entered initially each section must be entered in turn.
The document window is where the participant data is actually entered. Seethe section called “Document Data Entry” for information on data entry. The navigation buttons at the bottom of the window are identical of purpose to the 'forward' and 'back' buttons in the document toolbar.
The status bar will indicate when the application is performing long-running tasks, such as updating Collect with a representation of a study from the database.
The square status icon in the lower right-hand corner of the status bar indicates whether you are on-line or off-line. (Green means on-line, red means off-line). Seethe section called “Connectivity modes”for information about the on-line and off-line statuses.
The 'File' menu provides options for the creating a new record and for opening an existing record. each option is explained below.
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'New participant'
Allows you to create a new participant. See the section called “Creating a new record for a participant” for details.
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'Open participant'
Allows you to open an existing participant record. See the section called “Opening Existing Participants” for details.
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Exit
Allows you to exit Collect. See the section called “Exiting Collect” for details.
Update. Allows you to update Collect's local representation of the study. This option is generally not needed to be used because Collect automatically performs an update whenever it starts up and is able to connect to the database.
The 'Commit' option will appear only if you are not working in 'Always-online' mode. See the section called “Committing Data to the Database”to learn how to commit data to the database.
The 'Print' menu contains options that allow you to extract and view information, in various formats, about a participant. Each option is explained below.
- 'Paper document...'
This option creates a blank .pdf template of the chosen document in order to enable you to capture the data on paper.
- Report
This option allows you to print out various reports that are available for your study.
- Document
This option creates a .pdf document holding document data for a chosen participant and document.
- Record
This option creates an amalgamated .pdf document that holds the document data for all documents within the record.
The 'Advanced' Menu contains options that only need to be used in specific circumstances.
Rebuild Local Caches - this option deletes Collect's local data caches from your computer then rebuilds them from the repository.
For performance reasons Collect caches the status of all participants in the database, and the statuses of all documents completed for them, in files on your local hard-drive. These are refreshed on each login to Collect, so in normal operation they provide an accurate representation of the the data in the database. However, in exceptional circumstances your local cache and the actual state of the database can get out of sync. Selecting this option completely rebuilds the caches from the database, thus getting them back in sync.
You will generally only need to use this option if advised to by support. If you are working in "online and offline" mode you will be forced to commit all local data to the database beofre the rebuilding of your caches can occur.
Link Records - allows two records to be linked for data replication. See the section called “Data Replication” for full details. Only displayed if you are a member of a study that uses data replication.
Synchronize Linked Records - allows two records that are already linked to have their data synchronized. See the section called “Data Replication” for full details. Only displayed if you are a member of a study that uses data replication.
The 'Options' Menu provides options for configuring the system, and for changing your password.
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Change password...
Use this option to change your password.
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Settings...
Use this option if you want to change your proxy settings, change the Collect home directory, or to change your 'Always-online' status.
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Help
This option launches the 'help' documentation.
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Email log file
This option emails a copy of Collect's logfiles to the support team. The support team may request that you invoke this option to help diagose any problems you may be experiencing.
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About
This option launches a dialog that displays software version information.