About dZSlates

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dZSlates™ are a way of gathering real-world observations into dataZoa collaboratively.

Highlights:

  • Collaborators get automated email reminders to contribute their data
  • You have the option to make all contributions provisional until reviewed and approved by you
  • Once approved, contributed data flows out into your calculations, displays, and dashboards



For example, imagine that you are in charge of assembling and releasing monthly visitor stats for your city's five art museums. You collect three data series, representing children, adults, and senior citizens from each museum. You would like an easy way for contributors at each museum to help you gather the new numbers into one place each month -- and release them in one shot at the end of the month. dZSlates are just your ticket.

Here is what you would do to set up a dZSlates data-intake system for each of our 5 museums:

Step 1 - Upload your Data Series
In the Workbench, upload any series you already have into dataZoa under appropriate series names. Imagine you have three series, Fine Art - Adults, Fine Art Children, Fine Art - Seniors, for your Fine Art museum, and similarly named series for each of your other four museums. That makes a total of fifteen series.

Step 2 - Create a GroupList for Each Contributor's Data
For each museum, put checks by the three series for that museum, and then use the "GroupLists..." button to create a grouplist called, for example, "Fine Art Museum". Your fifteen series are now in five grouplists.

Step 3 - Create a dZSlate for Each Contributor

In the housekeeping toolbar, select the dZSlates icon.

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Go to dZSlates and use the "create" link to create a slate, choosing "Fine Art Museum" from the drop down list and click the Create New button. You can view your new slate by clicking on the "Activate Slate link. Then, to send this dZslate off to the person who contributes your data from the Fine Art Museum, simply click on the Settings link, enter their email address, choose and optional password and hint (also optional), and write any greeting note you like and click the Save Changes button.

Step 4 - Email Each Contributor their dZSlate Link
Click the Settings link for any dZSlate to pick up the web link for that slate, which you can then email to your data contributor.

You're Done!