General Discussions

  • 1.  Animal Oversight trick with the dictionaries I learned

    CAYUSE CHAMPION
    Posted 03-16-2021 17:55
    A tip to share...

    I contacted Support for assistance on reviewing the IACUC protocol dictionaries.  I've been building them for almost two years and decided I needed to go back in to do some quality control (aka fix mistakes).  I started working on the drug list which has bulged to 66 entries - probably small compared to other programs.

    The grid is a fixed size, so it means a lot of scrolling.  Not efficient and it became very challenging and frustrating.

    I wanted to sort the columns so I could find things more easily.  Most columns sort, but not the one I wanted (because it's a no/yes checkbox response I learned from Michelle of Support).

    I thought I could overcome these issues if there was a way to download the whole dictionary into a spreadsheet.  How?  There is no button or click here option.

    Well, thinking maybe Support has a solution, off a trouble ticket went.  Michelle (!!) responded later in the day and showed me how I could copy and paste directly from the browser window (why hadn't I thought of that?).  She changed the amount of records to 100 and placed the mouse in the bottom right of the grid (screenshot attached with highlights for reference) and scrolled up to the top.  With everything highlighted, all could be copied and pasted into a spreadsheet for further processing *and* sorting as needed.

    Others (like the vet in this case) and I can do the QC on a dictionary and make fixes using the spreadsheet where we can see almost everything all at once.  Of course, I have to go back to the template, enter and finalize the corrections.  But overall, it will be more efficient.

    Great!  Quite satisfied with this.  My thanks to Michelle now, but let it be known that Sahuri has helped me numerous times, too.

    I hope this approach can help others.

    Bruce



  • 2.  RE: Animal Oversight trick with the dictionaries I learned

    STAR CONTRIBUTOR
    Posted 03-17-2021 07:56
    That's very helpful!    Thanks!

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    Lorraine Bell
    Training Program Coordinator
    University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
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  • 3.  RE: Animal Oversight trick with the dictionaries I learned

    SUPERSTAR CONTRIBUTOR
    Posted 03-18-2021 06:44
    Hi all,

    For dictionary management in a similar vein, I've found it useful to run AAALAC Compliance reports, using the filters for Current Protocol (check) and Protocol Status (equals Approved w/o Stipulation, and perhaps again with status Pending and/or Un-finished), to provide insight into which dictionary options are currently in use.  I export the files to Excel and copy and paste the info for different status levels into a single worksheet.  From there, I can apply filters from the Excel Data menu for ease of info manipulation and analysis.

    Using the same worksheet, one may also select the column that corresponds to the dictionary options and apply the Remove Duplicates option (also found in the Data Menu)--the resultant list can be compared against the dictionary list generated as Bruce has described, and one can consider updating the dictionary to hide the options that no longer seem to be in use (they can always be easily reactivated later, as needed).  This means your PIs won't need to sift through as huge of a table or dropdown list to find the items they actually need.

    Cheers,
    Cheryl

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    Cheryl Cheney, CPIA
    IACUC Coordinator/Compliance Specialist
    Biogen
    Cambridge, MA
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