Trackabeast User's Manual 6/3/04
Trackabeast Contact Information:
Please feel free to contact the Trackabeast developers in California at anytime with questions.
Carrie Gerendasy: 510-292-7783, carriedasy@comcast.net
Jim Matz:jmmzca@sbcglobal.net
Table of Contents
- Overview - Terms and Tips
- Logging In
- Getting Started
- Navigating the System
- Adding an Animal
- Entering Vital Information - the stub
- Describing Profile Data
- Recording the Initial Medical Condition
- Using the Check List: Critical Medical Events
- Placing an Animal
- Adding Medical Events
- Adding a Person
- Entering Vital Information - the stub
- Describing Profile Data
- Adding Volunteer Description
- Adding Foster Description
- Placements From a Person’s point of view
- Adding a Volunteer Activities and Donations
- Adding an Organization
- Entering Vital Information - the stub
- Describing Profile Data
- Placements From an Organization’s point of view
- Adding a Donation
- Top Level Animal Browser
- Top Level Person Browser
- Top Level Organization Browser
- Top Level Placement Browser
- Top Level Volunteer History (Activities) Browser
- Top Level Donation History Browser
- Reminders
- A Sample List of Reports You Might want and how to get them
- Reporting Bugs
- Coming Soon to Trackabeast…
- Formats: Date and Telephone Number Formats
- Available Soon: Appendix: Instructions for Each Screen
Terms:
Browser: Trackabeast is made up of a combination of tables and forms. The tables are lists of ‘things’, either animals, people, placements, volunteer activities, donation history, medical history, or reminders. We refer to these tables as browsers because you can use them to browse through your entire collection of those ‘things’. Do not confuse our use of the word ‘browser’ with an internet browser application such as Internet Explorer or Netscape. There are top level browsers and secondary level browsers. Top level browsers are arrived at by clicking on the one of the links at the bottom of the start page (first page after login), or from the tabs at the top of your screen from any page within the application.
Filter: A filter is a search condition. You use a filter to filter out only the information you wish to get in your browser. An example would be “show cats”. With this box checked in the animal browser and none of the others checked below it, you will see a list of only cats. Filters limit the information in the browser according to conditions you set. Another example would be to filter animals shown in the browser according to their date of entry or their place of origin (a specific shelter for example).
Sorting: A sort changes the order in which information is presented in your browser. It does not change the number of entries displayed, it simply orders them by whatever criteria you choose from the sort dropdown box on the left side, directly above the browser information. If you choose sort by name in the animal browser, you will get an alphabetical listing of animals by name. Sort by type will give you an alphabetical listing by species (cat, dog, kitten, puppy). Sorts are alphanumeric or by date, depending on the data you are sorting. If you sort by ‘name’, the sort will be alphabetical. A sort by ‘charge’ will sort numerically, and a sort by date-in or date-out (or both), will be chronological.
Tips:
Single click on all buttons in Trackabeast. Our popups are designed to disappear if you click outside of the popup window. Therefore, if you double-click on the button that opens the popup, the first click will open the popup and the second click will close it. Bummer.
The backbutton is disabled in Trackabeast . This could be frustrating if you’re in the habit of using the backbutton, but almost all pages in Trackabeast can be reached with a single click and will appear as you left them, so no extra clicks are needed.
Popup windows: Trackabeast uses popup windows in a variety of places. Minimizing these windows, or clicking outside of them will cause them to disappear with the information unsaved. Be sure to fill them out and submit them before doing anything else. If you a popup window does not ‘pop’ up when you expect it to, check minimized browsers at the bottom of your screen. Your popup window may be in one of those. Trackabeast offers the least surprises when no other browser windows are open.
If you have a popup-blocker installed on your browser, Trackabeast may not run correctly. You can usually turn popup-blockers on and off at will, so be sure to have it turned off while using Trackabeast.
AOL Browser: Trackabeast does not work properly in the AOL browser. If you use AOL, open a second browser such as Internet Explorer or Netscape to use Trackabeast.
To login to Trackabeast as a customer, go to the URL http://www.trackabeast.com. You will have been given a user name and password by a Trackabeast administrator. Note this is a different URL from our demo site.
To login into the demo site, go to the URL http://www.trackabeast.com:8081/trackabeast and login using
User name: demo
Password: demo
Coming Soon: Both sites will be available through our web page in the near future. You will be able to do a customer login or go to the demo site without typing in any special URL (except the one to our homepage, of course).
When you are first signed up with Trackabeast, you will have exactly one person in your person table who is an administrative user. This user has permission to enter the admin page and add other users as well as customize dropdowns. Start by customizing your dropdowns. There are 12 drop-down menus throughout the Trackabeast application that you can populate yourself according to how you do business. These are marked with a small paw print. Below is a list of what each one is and where you can find it in the application.
From the Trackabeast Startpage (the page you arrive at directly after logging in), click on the ‘admin’ link at the top of the page. This will bring you to the admin page where you can add users and customize dropdowns.
Customizing dropdowns : Look through each of the dropdowns and you will see there are some entries in each of them. These are only there as a guide as to what those dropdowns are used for. We have attempted to make reasonable suggestions and you may want to use all or some of what is already there. You can remove entries and add your own. (Please see full description of each customizable dropdown below.)
To delete an item from a dropdown : click on the arrow of the dropdown next to the ‘delete’ button of the table you are customizing. Highlight the entry you wish to delete, and then click ‘delete’. You will get a message saying the item has been deleted.
To add an item to a dropdown : type the item in the text box next to the ‘add’ button of the table you are customizing, then click ‘add’. You will get a message saying the item has been added. Pull down the dropdown again to see that it is there.
Note: If you have accidentally put an item in twice and try to delete one of them, both items will be deleted. Simply add the item again once.
Adding Users: on the admin page, you will see a dropdown of all people in your database. You can choose any of these people to add as users. If you want to add someone who is not already in your database, you must first add them as a person through the ‘Person’ screens (see ‘Adding a Person’ below). You can choose ‘admin’ or ‘general’ permission for the new user. ‘admin’ users can add other users and edit dropdowns. A popup window will appear with the user’s name in it. You must supply and user name and password, then click ‘submit’.
Note: If you are using Netscape and you find that adding a new user does not work, go through the following steps:
- Go to Netscape Menu Bar and click edit
- Choose 'Preferences'
- Click on 'Privacy and Security'. If the options for 'Privacy and Security' do not expand below it when you click it, double click 'Privacy and Security'.
- Click on Passwords.
- Click on button 'Manage Stored Passwords'.
- Find Trackabeast under the list of sites. Highlight the entry and click 'remove', then click 'ok'.
- Close your Netscape browser and reopen it.
- Login to Trackabeast - now Netscape may open a popup window asking you if you want it to remember your 'user name' and 'password'. If it does, chose 'Never for this Site'.
Phew - now it should work!
Viewing and Deleting Users: You can view login information about a user by expanding the dropdown next to ‘View User’. Highlight the user you want to look at, and click the ‘View User’ button. A popup window will appear which includes the first name, last name, username, password and permission level of this user. You can delete the user from this popup window. Deleting a user does not delete the person from the database, it merely takes away their login permission. The view-user popup cannot be edited, so, if you want to change a user name or password, delete the user and add them again with the new name or password. You cannot, however, delete yourself. If you want to change your own user-name or password, make a new admin user and have, login as that person and change yourself.
Description of dropdowns:
- Donation References - This dropdown describes why a donation was given, as in, was it in response to a particular event, campaign, mailing or just a general donation. It appears in a donation screen which you get to by clicking ‘Donation History’, a subfolder of ‘Person’. Click ‘Add a Donation’. You get a dropdown listing possible reasons to donate. This allows you to couple donations with a particular fundraising drives. You can then enter the reference as a search condition in the donation table and find out how much was donated for a particular drive and by whom. When you plan a fundraising drive, add it to your “Donation References” dropdown.
- Origins - This dropdown describes where the animal came from and is seen on the animal profile page. Have this list include shelters you rescue from and other sources of animals into your system. This allows you to collect statistics on animals with different origins.
- Breed - This dropdown appears in the animal profile page for dogs only. It allows you to gather statistics on dogs by breed. You need only enter the breeds you wish to keep track of and choose ‘other’ for the rest, or put in every type you rescue. You can also keep this information in the description/comments section.
- Placement Status (formerly Rescue Status) - Every animal has to be somewhere. “Placement Status” answers the question: What’s it doing there? Is it being fostered? Boarded? Adopted? This appears on the “Add New Location” screen which is a subfolder of animal. Click on ‘Placement’, then click ‘Add a Placement’. “Placement Status” is the second field in that form. You can search on this criteria from the upper level animal table or placement table and find out how many fosters you have, how many boarders and so on at any given time.
- Rescue Type - This describes how you rescued the animal - did you bring it into your system, get it accepted into another no-kill organization, adopt it out directly from the shelter, or did you save it some other way? This dropdown appears on ‘Animal Profile’. It allows you to keep track of rescues you may have assisted with in some manner besides your usual operation. This can be helpful to keep track of for grants and donations.
- Cat Treatments, Cat Diagnoses, Dog Treatment and Dog Diagnoses are dropdowns in the medical screen which you arrive at by clicking “Add New Medical Entry” from the Medical subfolder of ‘Animal’. They also appear in ‘Initial Medical Conditions’, a subfolder of Animal seen when an animal is first added. Any information you put in this screen will be accessible through medical history thereafter.
- Cat Vaccs, Dog Vaccs and Feline Leuk test are dropdowns on the ‘Check List’ page which is a subfolder of ‘Animal’. Note on vaccinations: this dropdown currently only shows up in the checklist form for first, second and third vaccinations. If you want to record vaccinations besides the suggested 3 initials, add them to the Treatment dropdown and record them as a regular medical record rather than as a vaccination. Otherwise, you will not have the space to record the 3 initial vacs.
The top level navigation consists of file-folder tabs which you will see on every page except the login, start page and admin pages. These are the seven main areas of the Trackabeast application: Animals, People, Organizations, Placements, Activities, Donations, Reminders. Clicking on any of the top level navigation tabs brings you to a table of information where you can browse through all entries in the database in that category, or all entries matching your selected search criteria for that category. You can toggle between top level categories without losing your search criteria for any one table.
Search Criteria (filters):
All top browsers have search criteria, known as filters, and sorting options that you can choose from. The filters are in a box with a border around it at the top of the table. The filters are cumulative, so if you choose “show all puppies”, “from date entered: 4/27/04”, and “origin is Berkeley Shelter”, you will get a list of puppies who entered your system since 4/27/04 and came from the Berkeley Shelter. If you then check “Show Cats”, you will get puppies and cats who entered the system since 4/27/04 and came from the Berkeley Shelter. The number of items in the list is printed directly above the table as is the number of pages in the current search, and which page you are looking at.Trackabeast is always a work in progress, according to customer feedback. Columns in tables may change and filters may be added or subtracted. You will be notified of any changes before they are made.
Search Again and Start Again Buttons:
When you have chosen your filters and sorting criteria, click “Search Again” to perform the search. Click “Start Again” if you wish to go back to the original or default search/sort criteria.Sorting:
You can sort information by a variety of fields. Sorting does not limit your search results, it merely orders them in a different way. A ‘sort’ dropdown list is directly above each table.Paging through Data:
On the upper right side of each table are arrows that look like this:
< << >> >.< means go back to first page and > means go to last page. << >> mean go back or ahead a single page. If you know the name of the animal or person you are looking for, the fastest way to find them is to put part of their last name in the text box “Last Names Begins With”, or some part of their first or last name in the text box “Name or Comments contain”. These boxes are in the bordered box at the top of most tables.
Adding/Editing entries:
You can add new entries or edit existing entries from this top level for Animals, People, Organizations and Reminders. “Adding” is described in detail below. To edit, find the animal, person or organization that you wish to edit in the top level table (there are many ways to do this), and click the “edit” button on the left side of the row. You can only add placement, activities and donations from the secondary level, however. The top level Placements table gives you a list of all placements for all animals in the system. Activities refers to a history of all Volunteer Activities from all people in the system, and Donations gives you a history of all donations from all people in the system. Placements, Activities and Donations are also listed in the secondary navigation where they apply to individual animals and people. You can add or edit individual placements, volunteer activities or donations on the secondary level.
When you edit or add an individual entry into one of the top level tables, you will see a list of categories underneath the top file-folder tabs. This is called the secondary navigation banner and it applies to the individual you are working on. Animals, People and Organizations all have different secondary navigation banners which will be described below. What is important to know about these banners is that each must be submitted individually. You can toggle between them without loss of information, however, as soon as you click something from the top banner, you will lose anything you haven’t submitted from the secondary group of forms. The secondary navigation section consists of forms and tables that apply to individual things (depending on which category you are in).
Forms:
Fill out as much or as little information as you want to in whichever forms you think will be useful for your organization. Many of these fields are searchable in the upper level tables. For instance, in the “Foster Description” form under “Person”, if you have checked foster of bottle-feed kittens, you can find them in a search which includes “foster” and “bottle feeds” in the top level person table. They will not come up in a search if you have not put anything in the “Foster Description” for the individual. You can familiarize yourself with searchable fields by looking through the bordered box of search criteria at the top of each table. (Yikes, should we list all searchable fields?)Submitting and Deleting Forms:
Information added to forms will only go into the database if you click the “Submit” button, or the enter key while on that page. Be sure to submit all forms in the secondary navigation before clicking on any of the buttons on the top level of navigation. Each form must be submitted separately.Individual entries can be deleted by clicking the “Delete” button in the form itself. Deleted animals, people and organizations will not show up in the top level tables, however, you may still come across them in other contexts. For “People”, “Animals” and “Organizations”, you also have the option of de-activating the entry. This is a safer option then deleting if you think you might change your mind.
Editing Existing Forms:
Any entry into the database can be edited. From the top level navigation banner, choose the category of whatever you wish to edit (Animal, People, Organizations). You will see a table with a list of ‘things’. Each thing has an “edit” button next to it. Use this to view or edit. Edit will bring up the forms associated with that thing. (is this too redundant with editing under top level navigation, or should all edit stuff go below as in the TOC above?)Navigating long dropdown lists:
Some of your dropdowns will get very long. You can speed your search of the correct item by simply typing the first letter of the thing you are looking for. After that, you will have to scroll using the arrow button next to the dropdown.Secondary level Tables:
The secondary navigation in most categories contains some elements that are tables, or areas where you browse through multiple listings. These apply only to the individual you are looking at, but they work very much like the upper level tables in terms of search and sort criteria and paging. You can add entries from this level. Clicking on “add” in a secondary navigation table causes a form to appear in a popup window. (Please read about popup windows above.)
From the start page (the page you arrive at after logging in), click on “Animals” from the bottom group of links, or, from within the application, click on “Animals” from the top group of file-folder tabs. Chose one of the 3 buttons at the top of the main animal table: ‘Add Dog”, ‘Add Cat’, ‘Add Other’. A small window will open asking you for a few pieces of required information about the animal:
Name: whatever you would like to call the animal (can be changed later).
Date in: This refers to the date the animal was either brought into your system, or the date it was rescued by your group in some other way. It could simply be the day the animal was brought to your attention.
Age: Enter your best guess for the animals age using years, months, weeks and/or days. Note: Animals listed as under a year old will appear in the animal table as ‘puppies’ or ‘kittens’; animals over a year appear as ‘dogs’ or ‘cats’. Trackabeast will age the animal appropriately so you should not need to change this field, unless you feel you made a mistake the first time.
Enter the required information and submit the form. You will then be brought to the ‘animal profile’ page which allows you to add much more information about the animal.
The profile page is part of a secondary group of categories which apply to the individual animal you are working on. This is the secondary navigation bar described above. The categories are Initial Medical Conditions, Check List, Placements, Medical History. You can enter information in any of these categories, clicking between them without losing information, however, you must submit each form separately before clicking on anything in the top level file-folder tabs or you will lose the information you added.
Impound Number: The shelter number in case you need it.
Rescue Group Animal Id: If you have your own numbering scheme for the animals in your system, enter it here. Trackabeast also provides unique animal ids numbers which you can use, however, you may wish to chose ids that impart some information like species, year-in, etc.
Date in: This should be filled in already from the ‘stub’, however you can change it in this screen.
Where did the Animal Come from: Rescue groups often need to keep track of the number of animals they rescue from particular shelters or from a particular type of situation like ‘found/stray’. This is a customizable dropdown list. You can list all the possible origins for animals your group deals with.
Coming Soon: Name of person surrendering animal: If an animal comes into your system by means of a person bringing it to you, you can record that person here. The person must be in the database and must have ‘surrenderer’ checked in his/her profile. See ‘quick person’ above.
Initial Rescue Activity: You may have more than one way that you rescue animals and would like to keep track of all rescues even if the animal does not come into your system. You may trade animals with other groups like breed rescues, transfer animals to no-kill shelters, or council to adopt from the shelter, to name a few examples. This is a customizable dropdown. If you wish to keep track of those activities, put the activities you most commonly participate in in this dropdown. You will then be able to generate statistics on, not only how many animals went through your system, but how many you saved in various other ways.
Sex: Choose ‘male’, ‘female’ or let this field default to ‘unknown’.
Age: Enter age in years, months, weeks and/or days (however you’d like). Trackabeast will then keep track of the animals age for you.
Breed: There is a customizable breed dropdown list for dogs but not for cats. Enter names of all breeds you expect to rescue in that dropdown, or enter breeds as you get them.
Size: Enter small, medium or large, or let it default to ‘unknown’.
Upload Photo: Trackabeast allows you to upload photos from your system onto the server. Click the browse button and navigate to the photo you want for this animal. Click on the picture file when you find it and wait while the picture gets uploaded to the server. Only one picture will be in the system for an animal at any time, however, you can overwrite it with different pictures as often as you want.
Weight: Enter animal’s weight.
Adoption Ready: Is the animal ready to be adopted?
If not when? Put a date in when you think the animal will be ready for adoption.Special Needs/Behavior Issues: Check this box if you want this animal to be part of any statistics you may gather concerning special needs animal.
Explain Special Needs: If you checked “Special Needs/Behavior Issues” above, describe them here.
Description/Temperament/Comments: Write a description of the animal here and use this box for any comments. It is also a good place to put any aliases the animal might have because this field is searchable in the animal table.
Biography: Write a bio for the animal that can be put on a web page.
Active/Inactive: Inactive animals, by default, do not show up in the animal table. You can change that by clicking ‘show inactive’, however you may not want to look at all animals that have ever been in the system all the time. De-activating animals allows you to keep just a list of current animals visible at all times. Check inactive whenever it makes sense for your organization to de-activate an animal. Some might de-activate an animal when it is adopted, and others may want to wait until a follow-visit has been made.
Coming Soon: What is a “quick person” and why would you want one? There are a couple of operations you can perform within the individual animal screens that require that a particular person already be in the database. These operations are recording an animal placement in a foster or adoptive home from the secondary ‘placement’ table, and recording the name of a person surrendering an animal in the animal profile. To keep you from having to leave the animal area to add the person, we have given you a way to add just enough information about the person for him/her to appear in the appropriate dropdowns. This is particularly important for doing a placement. Be sure when adding a quick person that you check ‘foster’, ‘adopter’ or ‘surrenderer’ in order for the person to appear in the appropriate dropdowns. To add a ‘quick person’, click on the button and a small window will open. Fill in at least the required fields for the person, check appropriate check boxes and click submit. That’s it.
Coming Soon: Microchip Number: This field allows you to enter a microchip number of an animal. The field is searchable.
Anything you need but don’t see: If there is important information you wish to include about an animal in the profile for which we have not provided a field, you can put the information in the comments box (middle of the 3 large text boxes). The comments field is fully searchable. Use this for microchip numbers, proposed adoption fee or any other information you might want to be able to search on that is not otherwise available.
Initial Medical Condition - medical problems to look for when you first see an animal:
This page was created so a rescuer could go through a quick check-list of medical problems that routinely require attention when an animal first comes into the rescue system. It allows you to record medications you might administer yourself at the time of rescue such as advantage or strongid, and to have a record of the animal’s general initial condition. Any medical problems that are not in this check-list should be entered in the medical section. You can also record the costs of these medications here and write yourself a reminder if you want to check up on any given condition (see Reminders below). Problems included in Initial Medical Conditions are as follows:
- Fleas
- Kennel Cough - dogs
- Worms
- Earmites
- Upper Respiratory Infection
- Eye Irritation
- Skin Problems
- Diarrhea
- Vomiting
- Eating - this defaults to ‘yes’, checking ‘no’ indicates a problem
- Drinking - this defaults to ‘yes’, checking ‘no’ indicates a problem
Choose treatments administered from the customizable dropdown next to the problem. You can add the medications you use to this dropdown on the admin page (see “Customizing Dropdowns” above).
The Initial Medical Condition page only appears when you add an animal and not when you go back to edit an animal later. All the conditions you checked, however, are recorded in the medical table for that animal, so you can view them or change them later on.
Check List - Vaccinations, Spay/Neuter, Rabies, FIV/FELV test
The check-list form is for recording standard medical procedures that rescues administer though they are not associated with illness: spay/neuter for both cats and dogs, FIV/FELV test for cats, rabies vaccine for dogs, and 3 vaccinations for each. You may not have to administer all of these procedures, however, you will probably want to know if they have been done. Note: You are not required to enter dates for these procedures, but it is a very good idea to enter dates for vaccinations and rabies shots as adopters need this information later on. When you check yes to FIV, rabies, spayed/neutered, or fully vaccinated, the check-list screen will shrink to only saying “yes” next to those issues. All the information you had recorded there, however, is viewable/editable in the medical table for this animal. If you believe you made an error and wish to do something over again in check-list, go to the medical entry in the medical table, click edit, and then set “resolution” to open. This will restore the check-list screen to where it was when you initially checked “yes” to any of these issues.
The dropdown lists for vaccinations are customizable. You can add whichever vaccines you normally use to the dog or cat vaccination dropdown on the admin page (see “Customizing Dropdowns” above).
Placing an Animal - It’s Gotta Go Somewhere!
When an animal comes into your system, or even if you rescue it some other way, say by transferring it to a no-kill facility, the animal has to go somewhere. It also goes somewhere each time you move it to a new foster, to an adopter, to a boarding facility or if the animal gets returned to your group, or if an animal dies. Each of these events should lead to a new placement form being filled out. You may or may not wish to keep track of where animals go if they are transferred or rescued by some other means, however, you probably will want to know where they go if they come into your system. Record this in a placement form. From the top level file tabs or the start page, choose “Animals”. Then either add a new animal or select the existing animal you wish to place by clicking ‘edit’ next to the animal’s name. You are now in the secondary banner level. Click “Placement”. Here you will see a list of previous placements for this animal if there are any. Click “Add New Placement”. A popup window will appear with a form (please read about popup windows above).
Date In: Enter the date the animal is going into this placement. This will automatically become the date out of the last placement if there was one. Enter placements chronologically, entering the earliest placement first.
Placement Status: This describes if the animal is being placed as a foster, a boarder, or an adopted animal in a forever home. Unfortunately, “deceased” and “euthanized” also seem to fit most logically in the category of placement status, as does “Returned”.
Foster or Adopter: This is a dropdown list made up of all people in your database who have the checkbox “Foster” or “Adopter” checked. If you do not see the name you are looking for, you must either add the person, or, if you think the person is in the database, edit the person and be sure “foster” or “adopter” is checked. It is for this reason that we have added a “Quick Person” button on the profile page. You can use this button to add just the bare essentials of a person you want to see in the placement dropdown. Unfortunately, when you go back to the profile, your placement popup window will disappear. You can either save the “placement” entry first, then go back and edit it, or you can simply let it disappear and start over again after you have added or edited the person from the Animal profile page. Once the person appears in the dropdown, select that person for your foster or adopter.
Organization: If you are boarding the animal, or have transferred it to another organization, you should chose the location from this dropdown rather than the “Foster or Adopter” dropdown. Organizations with appear in this dropdown are organizations you have added to your database and which have the checkbox “do we give or get animals from this organization” checked. If you do not see the organization you are looking for, you must leave the animal area, go to “Organizations” at the top level, and add the organization (or check the appropriate checkbox if the organization was already there).
Note: If you have given an animal a placement status of “deceased” or “returned”, you will probably want to leave both “Foster/Adopter” and “Organization” blank. For returned animals, make a second placement entry for it’s next location. This will keep the history of the animal clear when you look in the placement table.
Supplies/Boarding/Training (costs): This is a section where you can record non-medical costs towards the animal. If you provide a foster with supplies, record the amount here. To add more costs to the same placement at a later time, edit the placement entry and costs will be cumulative. You can enter costs for boarding whenever you get the bill.
Adoption Fees (income): Record income from adoption fee for the animal in the placement form. When you adopt an animal out, it is a placement. The combination of the costs and income in the placement forms allows you to keep a tally of outflow and income for all animals, and generate statistics in the upper level animal table.
Note: when an animal moves from one location to another, be sure to fill in a new placement entry rather than editing an old one. This allows you to keep a complete placement history on the animal.
Comments: Enter anything here that you care to note about the placement.
Reminder Date/Reminder Text: This allows you to record a reminder in the upper level reminder table for any follow-up activity associated with the placement. Many rescues do follow-up contacts for adoptions, and you might want to see how your fosters are doing within a certain period of time.
Recording Medical Information for an Animal
Medical issues in Trackabeast are divided into what we call tickets. A ticket is one or more related medical events. When adding a medical event, you can either add it as an entry to a pre-existing ticket, or you can start a new ticket. Adding new entries to pre-existing tickets is a way of keeping related medical events grouped together. For instance, if you have a dog with a protracted condition such as mange, you might list each mange treatment as an entry in a ticket and you could then view them together in consecutive rows in the medical table. We have grouped some things into tickets for you, such as “Initial Medical Conditions” and Vaccinations. You may choose not to use the ticket grouping and simply add each medical event as a new ticket. Whether you use multiple entries in tickets or a single ticket for each event, you can always view the medical table chronologically, rather than ordered by ticket. The medical history table defaults to “View by Ticket”, however, there is a button on top of the data which says “View by Date”. Click this to see medical events chronologically. Click “View by Ticket” to see events grouped, first, by ticket and, second, by date.
Adding New Tickets
To add a new ticket, click the “Add New Ticket” button on top of the medical history table. You will then see a form in a popup window (see popup windows above). This form allows you enter a great deal of information about the event. Add as much or as little as you need. This form is actually the initial entry in a new ticket if you choose to use it that way. It could be the only entry, or you could add onto it.Adding New Entries to Existing Tickets
You can add a new entry to a ticket by clicking the “New Entry” button to the right of the initial entry for that ticket. The initial entry has the title of the ticket and is the only one in the group with the “Add New Entry” button next to it. The form will appear in a popup window, and you will see it is exactly the same form you use to enter a ticket. As stated above, the ticket is really just an initial entry into a potential group of entries in a ticket.Medical Entry Form
List each field
From the start page (the page you arrive at after logging in), click on “People” from the bottom group of links, or, from within the application, click on “People” from the top group of file-folder tabs. Click on ‘Add a Person’. A small window will open asking you for a few pieces of information about the person:
- First Name: Required.
- Last Name: Required.
- Home Phone: Not Required
- Work Phone: Not Required.
- Cell Phone: Not Required.
- Check boxes: Foster, Adopter. Not required, however, you must check the appropriate boxes if you want to see the people in the placement dropdown for adopters/fosters or in the animal profile in the ‘surrendered-by’ dropdown.
Enter the required and other information and submit the form. You will then be brought to the ‘person profile’ page which allows you to add additional information.
The profile page is part of a secondary group of categories which apply to the individual person you are working on. This is the secondary navigation bar described above. The categories are Volunteer Info, Foster Info, Placements, Volunteer History, Donation History. You can enter information in any of these categories, clicking between them without losing information, however, you must submit each form separately before clicking on anything in the top level file-folder tabs or you will lose the information you added.
Active/Inactive: This feature defaults to “active”. Choose “inactive” if, for any reason, you don’t want to see the person in the upper level person table on a regular basis. The search criteria in the person table defaults to “Show Active”. You can change this by clicking “Show Inactive” if you need to. You can de-activate people or delete them. See “Submitting and Deleting Forms” under “Navigating the System” above.
Date Active: This defaults to the date you enter the person, however, you can overwrite that date if, for instance, the person has been with your group for some time and you are just now adding them to the database. It can be useful to know when a person became associated with your group.
Send mail: This box is checked by default, however, if someone requests that you not send them mail, or you simply don’t want them as part of your mailing list, uncheck this box. There is a button at the bottom of the upper level person table which says “Make Mailing Labels”. This feature will check if each person in the search which you are mailing to has the “Send Mail” feature checked and will not include those who don’t.
Standard contact information: first, last, address, phone numbers, email addresses. Some of these will already be filled in from the person ‘stub’.
Comments: Use this text area in any way you’d like. It is searchable from the person table at the top level, so you can put anything in there you think you might need to search on to find this person or information about this person.
Relationship to Organization: At the bottom of the person screen is a group of check boxes indicating how this person relates to your organization. Included are foster, volunteer, adopter, donor, staff, board member, pet wish, surrenderer. Choose as many as are appropriate. If you do not see the relationship you are looking for, do two things: store the information in the comments sections where you can search for it, and two, let us know so we can consider adding that role. These “Relationships” are searchable in a variety of contexts. You can search for all donors, for instance, in the person table and print mailing labels for just that group, or search for all volunteers in the donation table as another example.
Volunteer Info: Use this form to record specific information about a volunteer’s availability and the tasks they want to perform. All checkbox information in this form is searchable from the upper level person table. For example, you can search for all people who have volunteered to do animal transport, or to work specifically with dogs at mobile adoptions.
Foster Info: Use this form to record specific information about foster care givers. All checkbox information in this form is searchable form the upper level person table. For example, you could search for all fosters who take bottle-feeds.
Placements from a Person’s Point of View
The placement browser associated with each person shows the history of animals placed in foster or adoption with that person. It differs from the placement browser associated with individual animals in that you cannot add a placement from this browser. It is simply a way to see what animals are, or have been, with a particular person.
Adding Volunteer Activities and Donations:
While you can see a list of all volunteer activities performed by all people in the top level browser, and a list of all donations made by all people in the top level browser, you can only add a volunteer activity or donation at the secondary level, associated with a specific person. From the top level person table, click edit for an existing person, or add a new person. You will then come to the secondary level of choices for an individual. You will see “Volunteer History” and “Donation History”. From either one of these tables, you can add a new entry or edit an existing one. The entries show up in a small popup window and allow you to record information about the activity or donation.
Volunteer Activity:
the volunteer activity form has a dropdown for type of activity. That list is not customizable at this time. We hope you’ll find what you need in what we’ve provided. You can list the date, activity, number of hours and whether the task was completed. The last category “task completed” is there so that you can schedule volunteers ahead of time. You can enter a person for a future date and view what you have scheduled in the upper level activities table. The upper level table can be filtered by date, so if you have scheduled a number of people to work on a certain date, you can look at this list just for that date. You can fill in whether they actually completed the task after the fact, or perhaps you would want to delete the entry if they did not show up. The hours you put in the entry will be part of the total on top whether you have checked completed or not, so if you want this number to be accurate, you should probably delete uncompleted activities. Each person who has volunteer hours will have their own list of activities under their name on the secondary level. Thus you can see a list by individual, or a list for all individuals.
The lower level volunteer table and the upper level table each has hours at the top which are cumulative for all the activities in the table. Grantors are often interested in how many volunteer hours have been given to the group.
Donations:
The donation form has a dropdown for the reason for the donation. This list is customizable so that you can associate donations with your particular fundraising drives. You can record monetary donations as well as in-kind donations in this form. You can also record whether you’ve sent a ‘thank-you’ note. Each individual has their own “donation table” on the secondary level and there is a top level donation table for all donations. Each has a dollar amount and an in-kind amount at the top of the table. This figure will change if you filter the list in different ways. For instance, you can see a total for all donations toward a particular drive, or all donations in a particular time period.
From the start page (the page you arrive at after logging in), click on “Organizations” from the bottom group of links, or, from within the application, click on “Organizations” from the top group of file-folder tabs. Click on ‘Add an Organization’. A small window will open asking you for a few pieces of information about the organization:
Organization Name: Required.
Phone Number: Not Required.
Do we give or get animals to this organization?: Not required. Check this box if you want the organization to show up in the dropdown in the “placement” form, particularly if you board animals with them. You also may want them in this dropdown if you transfer animals to them or trade with them.
Enter the required and other information and submit the form. You will then be brought to the ‘organization profile’ page which allows you to add additional information.
The profile page is part of a secondary group of categories which apply to the individual organization you are working on. This is the secondary navigation bar described above. The categories are Placements and Donation History. You can enter information in any of these categories, clicking between them without losing information, however, you must submit each form separately before clicking on anything in the top level file-folder tabs or you will lose the information you added.
Standard contact information: Organization Name, Phone Numbers, Addresses. The name should already be there from the organization ‘stub’.
Relationship to Organization: Trackabeast provides 4 categories: gives or gets animals from organization, provides volunteers, gives donations, gives grants. None of these categories is currently searchable in the upper level organization table. Please let us know if you think these features should be added, or if it would be helpful to add other relationships, like veterinary services, that could be searched on.
Contact Information: Some organizations do not have central locations and numbers (like some rescue groups for instance!), and so we have given two blocks for contact information of individuals in the group.
Active/Inactive: This feature defaults to “active”. Choose “inactive” if, for any reason, you don’t want to see this organization in the upper level organization table.
Date Active: Add this date if you want to know how long the organization has been associated with your group.
Placements from an Organization’s Point of View
Like placements from a person’s point of view, this browser shows animals that are placed with an organization. This will usually mean boarding, or it could be another rescue group to whom you’ve transferred an animal. The browser will show you the history of all animals placed with this organization. Like the person placement browser, though, you cannot add placements from her. You can only add a placement from the perspective of the animal.
Donations
If you receive donations from an organization, record it by adding a donation under the individual organization. This would also be a place you could record grants. You would want to add the specific grant to the ‘donation reason’ dropdown so you could associate the money with a particular cause. You may want to record reporting terms of the grant in the comments section of the organization.
Using Tables - Browsing Data, Generating Reports and Statistics
(Please see also ‘Navigating System’/’Top Navigation’. )
Clicking on Animals on the start page or the top level navigation bar brings you to a page listing cost/income statistics at the top, search criteria, and a list of all animals appropriate to the search criteria. The default search criteria gives you a list of all active animals. You can view a single animal in the table or browse through many. A fair amount of information is available about each animal in this screen, however, you can get more information on a particular animal by clicking the ‘edit’ button next to the animal. The current location of the animal is hyperlinked to the profile page of the person(s) or organization the animal is residing. Clicking on this link allows you to quickly get information about a foster, adopter or boarder, like their phone number.
Statistics: At the top of the animal browser is cost/income information associated with whatever list of animals you have chosen in you search criteria. Trackabeast keeps a running tally of medical, boarding, supply and training costs that you have entered in the placement forms for each animal. It also keeps a running tally of adoption fees collected. You enter these costs in the placement popup screen when you move an animal into foster, adoption, boarding or where ever. You can edit a placement to add new expenses and they will be added to those already entered.
From these statistics, you can find out things like how much you have spent on medical care for kittens, or how much was spent on animals brought into the system between certain dates. Of course, the list is much longer.
Printer Friendly Buttons: Because the animal browser in Trackabeast is so long in terms of columns, we have offered you two ways to print it out. “Print Basic Info” and “Print Statistics”. Each includes a different set of columns. This feature is still under construction. When you click on one of these buttons, Trackabeast opens a second browser window that can be printed by clicking on ‘file’ in the top navbar of that window, and then choosing ‘print’. You can also save this report to you own computer by clicking ‘file’, then choosing ‘save as’. Give it an extension of .htm. You will be able to open it from your computer, but it will appear in an internet browser rather than as a Word doc or text file.
Person Table
(Please see also ‘Navigating System’/’Top Navigation’. )
Clicking on People on the Start Page or the top level navigation tab brings you to a page listing all people in your database matching the current search criteria. The default search criteria gives you a list of all active people. You can view a single person in the table or browse through many. Name, phone, email, address and relationship-to-group are available about each person in this screen, however, you can get more information on a particular person by clicking the ‘edit’ button next to the person.
Mailing Labels/Merging: At the bottom of each page of the person browser is a button that says “Make Mailing Labels”. You can actually do more than just make labels. When you click on the button, every person’s address in you current search criteria will be formatted into a text document that is tab delimited. You will see a hyperlink called to that document called “labels.txt” along with some instructions near the top of the browser. Clicking on this hyperlink opens a new browser window showing you this document. At the top of this second window, click ‘file’, then ‘save as’ and choose and directory in which to store this file on your person computer. Save the document as a text file, giving it any name you like. Now you have a tab-delimited file on your own computer which you can use with the Microsoft Word merge feature to make labels or letters. The procedure to do this depends on your version of Microsoft Word.
Here is one way to do it using Word 2002 on Windows 98:
- Open Microsoft Word
- Choose open a new document
- From top nav bar, choose ‘tools’
- From the tools dropdown, choose ‘Letters and Mailings’
- Under ‘Letters and Mailings’ choose ‘Mail Merge Wizard’.
- Follow Word’s instructions after that.
- When you get to ‘Select recipients’, choose ‘browse’
- Find the txt document you saved from Trackabeast on your own computer and choose it for your recipients file.
- Continue following instructions from the Microsoft Word Mail Merge Wizard.
Organization Table
(Please see also ‘Navigating System’/’Top Navigation’. )
Clicking on Organizations on the Start Page or the top level navigation tab brings you to a page listing all organizations in your database matching the current search criteria. You can view a single organization in the table or browse through many. You can see some information about each organization in this screen, however, you can get more information on a particular person by clicking the ‘edit’ button next to the organization.
Placements
(Please see also ‘Navigating System’/’Top Navigation’. )
Clicking on Placements from the Start Page or the top level navigation tab brings to a page listing all placements of all animals in your system matching the current search criteria. The default search criteria says show “current only”. This means you are only seeing the current location of each animal rather than a full history of placements for each animal. Unclicking “current only” gives you full placement history for every animal (both active and inactive).
Statistics: The statistics at the top of the placement browser are the same as the ones in the Animal Browser. Trackabeast keeps a running tally of medical, boarding, supply and training costs that you have entered in the placement forms for each animal. It also keeps a running tally of adoption fees collected. You enter these costs in the placement popup screen when you move an animal into foster, adoption, boarding or where ever. You can edit a placement to add new expenses and they will be added to those already entered.
The top level placement browser offers some valuable reporting capabilities. Because you can filter this browser by date-in to date-in to a particular location, you can find out here how many animals have been adopted during a certain period of time, or how many have been put in boarding or foster during a period of time.
Activities Table (Volunteer History)
(Please see also ‘Navigating System’/’Top Navigation’. )
This browser shows you a list of all volunteer activities performed for your organization by all people ever (so long as you’ve recorded it in an individual volunteer form, of course). Luckily, you can filter by date or by job. Total number of volunteer hours is listed at the top. This figure reflects the current search criteria, so if you want to find out, for instance, how many hours were volunteered for a newsletter, you can do that. Some grant-giving organizations want to know how many hours have been volunteered to your organization, so keeping track is a good thing.
Donations Table
(Please see also ‘Navigating System’/’Top Navigation’. )
The top level donation browser gives you a list of donations from all people and all organizations to your group. You can filter by ‘reason’ for donation, or by date, by relationship-to-your-group (volunteers, staff, etc.).
Reminders
(Please see also ‘Navigating System’/’Top Navigation’. )
Reminders can be added to the system through either a placement form or a medical entry. This gives you a way to remind yourself to check on an animal’s placement situation or medical condition. Some reminders are generated automatically. This feature is still in development and will probably work a little differently in the near future.
When you add an animal, reminders are automatically created for ‘Spay/Neuter’, ‘Leukemia/FIV Test’ for cats and ‘Rabies Vaccine’ for dogs unless any of these is checked ‘Yes’ in the ‘Checklist’ form. The date of the reminder for each of these defaults to today’s date, but you can change that to the real date you anticipate it happening.
Reminders can be entered in the Placement form, Initial Medical Conditions form, Medical Form or through the Check List form. The first 3 offer you a field for a date of the reminder and a field for the reminder text. The Check List form generates the reminders automatically, but you can change the date of the reminder.
Updating and Deleting Reminders
Reminders can be updated or deleted directly from the reminder browser. Once the reminder is connected, it is no longer connected to the form in which you entered it initially, so changing it in one of those forms will not work. Make the changes directly in the reminder browser.
Coming Very Soon: Self-generated reminders for Vaccines. (We somehow missed this one.)
Coming Soon: A place to put miscellaneous reminders that are not necessarily associated with medical or placement events.
A Sampling of Different Kinds of Reports You Might Want to See and How to Get Them
(Section under development)
1. How many animals came into the system between this date and that date:
In the Animal Browser, type the first date in “From Date In (Entry Date)”, and the second date in “To Date In (Entry Date)”. Click ‘Search Again’. You will see the number next to “Total Entries” directly above the list of entries.
2. How many kittens came into the system between this date and that date:
Same as above, except uncheck ‘show dogs’, ‘show cats’, ‘show puppies’. You will get only the number of kittens. Besides number, you can now also see what you’ve spent on this group of kittens for medical, supplies and boarding.
3. How much money has been generated by a particular fundraising endeavor:
In top level donation browser, choose the fundraising endeavor from the “Reason” dropdown. The “Reason” dropdown is customizable, so each time you begin a new drive, you can add it to this list. The total amount will be shown on top of the browser page.
4. How many animals have been adopted within certain dates:
In the top level Placement Browser, enter the dates in the “From Date In” and “To Date In”; choose adopted from the “Rescue Status” dropdown (this dropdown is customizable). Click “Search Again”. The number following “Total Entries” is the number that were adopted in that time.
5. How many dogs were rescued from a particular shelter within a period of time:
In the Animal Browser, choose the shelter from the “Origin” dropdown. This dropdown is customizable and should have the names of shelters and other venues you rescue from. Choose the shelter you are interested in. Put the first date in “From (Entry Date)” and the second date in “To (Entry Date)”. Click “Search Again”. The number following “Total Entries” is the number you rescued from that shelter in that time.
Reporting Bugs and Suggestions
Please send bugs and suggestions to the Trackabeast developers. Contact information is at the top of this document. Do not send links to pages as we will not be able to get to them. Feel free to send screen shots if you know how. Otherwise, simply describe the error in as much detail as you can, repeating some of the text in the error page if necessary.
Phone numbers are accepted in a variety of forms:
- 1-222-333-4444 - use dashes or any other delimiter including spaces
- 222-333-4444
- 333-4444
- (111) 222-3333
- 111/222-3333
Trackabeast accepts the following date formats:
- dd-mm-yyyy or dd/mm/yyyy
- d-m-yy or d/m/yy
- d-m-yyyy or d/m/yyyy
