Getting started¶

The most common and fun things to do in SPMS revolve around project approval and taking the “ow” out of the “how” of annual reporting.

Gone are the days of emailing MS Word documents - the future is here, and it’s all in your browser. SPMS will tell you what to do (your Tasks), offer shortcuts to your Projects, and allow you to browse other Projects and Reports. If there are urgent or new Tasks, SPMS will notify you via email.

Login¶

SPMS uses the DBCA Single-Sign-On login, provided by Microsoft’s Office 365. Once-off, SPMS will redirect you to login.microsoftonline.com, which you already have used to login to other Parks & Wildlife online services, such as Office 365.

Remember to use your email address (including @dbca.wa.gov.au), not your user name.

Feel free to select “Keep me signed in”, and let your browser “remember the password”. At this point, you already are logged into your computer with the same credentials, so letting the browser keep you logged in is no extra security risk.

Your browser will remember your login status for a few weeks. However, for security reasons, SPMS will occasionally ask you to provide your login again.

SPMS recommends to use Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox for optimal browsing experience.

Find a Project¶

On the “Browse all Projects” page you can filter and search for projects.

Project Life Cycles¶

First, let’s have a look at the game of snakes and ladders that is SPMS’s project life cycle management.

There are three main workflows:

Project creation and approval (“New” to “Active”),
providing annual ARAR updates (“Active” to “Updating” and back), and
project closure (goal: “Completed”).

Project creation and approval will require solving two side quests, Concept Plan and Project Plan approval.

Active projects are allowed to be worked on, and will require annual progress reports.

Closing a project requires an intricate, multi-step process, which we’ll discuss here in detail.

Project Creation and Approval¶

Create a new Science Project¶

On the SPMS home page click Create New Project
In the Project Type dropdown box select Science Project
Enter a project title and divisional program (and as many other fields as you can fill in), then click Save Changes
In the Overview tab, enter team members. External team members must first be registered with SPMS (see below - Register external colleague). Once registered, click Add team member and select them as you would any staff member. Click Edit Project Details to provide additional information such as location, then click Save Changes.
In the Concept Plan tab, enter the details of your concept plan, then click Save Changes.
Submit the concept plan for review (Submit for review button) by your Program Leader.

Core Functions look the same as Science Projects, however they are maintained by SPMS admins.

Create a new External Collaboration¶

On the SPMS home page (https://scienceprojects.dbca.wa.gov.au) click Create New Project
In the Project Type dropdown box select External Collaboration
Enter a project title and divisional program, then click Save Changes
In the Overview tab, enter team members. External collaborators must first be registered with SPMS (see below - Register external colleague). Once registered, click Add team member and select them as you would any staff member.
Click Edit project details, then under Collaboration details enter the collaboration name and budget.

Create a new Student Project¶

On the SPMS home page (https://scienceprojects.dbca.wa.gov.au) click Create New Project
In the Project Type dropdown box select Student Project
Enter a project title and divisional program, then click Save Changes
In the Overview tab, enter team members. If student is external you must first register them with SPMS (see below - Register external colleague). Once registered, click Add team member and select them as you would any staff member.
Click Edit project details, then under Student project details enter the study level and academic organisation.

Managing project teams¶

Add a dbca employee as team member¶

Before SPMS can add dbca employees to teams, they have to login once in person, so that SPMS adds them to its internal user database.

A user that has never logged in cannot be added to teams or into project roles.

Register an external colleague¶

Click on the project Overview tab or open Menu > Staff
Click Register external colleague
Provide a username (use givenname_surname) and password (can be same as username) and click Save Changes (first screen).
On the second screen, enter as many user details as you can and click Save Changes.
External colleagues can be natural persons or groups/organisations. Choose to “Show as Group” accordingly.
External colleagues will not show up on the team list in the ARAR or on the project overview page. They are however useful to list on the project, as they are real persons interacting directly with the project.

Now the new user can be added to project teams or project roles.

Note External colleagues cannot login to SPMS, unless they have a dbca account and email. However, a profile needs to be created as shown here in order to add them to project team lists and represent them with their correct name and attribution.

Managing privileged user roles¶

The application’s superusers can manage members of the “reviewer” (all Program Leaders and SCMT members) and “approver” (Directorate) group, as well as set the SCD program’s details, such as current program leader.

Also, representatives of Biometrician (BM), Herbarium Curator (HC), Data Manager (DM), and Animal Ethics Committee (AE) are managed by superusers.

If you feel you should be in either of these groups, contact the system administrators.

Closing a Project¶

Closing a Science Project¶

The official way to initiate the closure process an active Science Project is for the project team to hit the “Request Closure” button.

“Request Closure” will create a Project Closure form and forward the project to the status “Closure Requested”.
The project team has to update the Project Closure, the submit for review.
The Program Leader, then the Directorate have to approve the form.
On approval of the Project Closure, the project turns to status “Closing”, which means that a last ARAR update has to be provided.
When the next ARAR comes around, a Progress Report (ARAR update) is requested.
The project team has to update the Progress Report and submit it for review and approval.
Approval of the Progress Report will automatically mark the project as “completed”.

Notes:

If a project is in the process of Project Closure approval (status “Closure Requested”), and an ARAR cycle is started, no Progress Report will be requested from the project - the Project Closure has to be approved first, then the Directorate can request the final Progress Report.
If a project is “Active”, but really should have been “Closing” (and working on the Projcet Closure document), and an ARAR came around, incorrectly asking the project to provide a standard Progress Report, the Directorate can “Force Closure”, which will delete the Progress Report, create a Project Closure, and fast-forward the project into the correct status “Closure Requested”. Now, the Project Closure can be submitted and approved, then the Directorate can immediately request a final Progress Report.
The Directorate can (when asked to, and at their discretion), suspend or terminate a project to indicate that although the project goals have not been met, the project is currently or permanently set aside and not being worked on.
The Directorate can also force-choke a project into status “Completed” without due process. With great power comes great responsibility.
The Directorate can reactivate suspended, terminated, and completed projects.

Closing a Student Project¶

The project team can “Request Closure” of any active Student Project. Since there is no formal closure process, the project simply will be marked as “Completed”.

If the Student Project is in the middle of an ARAR update, the project team can still choose to “Cancel update and request closure”, which will mark the project as “Completed” and delete the Progress Report. Since SPMS cannot decide whether this Progress Report is required or not, it is up to the team to decide the appropriate action.

Closing an External Collaboration¶

Project-level details of an External Collaborations will be included in an ARAR, but no separate Progress Report will be requested. Therefore it is important for staff to keep the project details and team lists of External Collaborations updated, and close them as appropriate.

There is no formal closure process of External Collaborations, so, as with Student Projects, “Request Closure” will simply mark them as “Completed” and remove them from any active ARAR.

Interaction with the Data Catalogue¶

The Project Closure document will want to know where the data and digital artefacts are. The place for them is the data catalogue.

A semi-official “what goes where” guide, including instructions for the data catalogue, can be found on the Marine Science Wiki.

Please note that every researcher is still (as per divisional guidelines) responsible to backup their data in two separate places, and put a third copy on the data catalogue.

Our data catalogue is a warehouse of metadata ( = a phone book for datasets) which holds links to, or (third!) copies of, departmental datasets. The catalogue is not a complete backup for data and - although the server and the database are backed up, and there are fail safes in place - with enough bad luck, can lose its copy of datasets.

So, the third copy on the data catalogue will be the one that is discovered and accessed by Departmental colleagues most oftenly, whereas the first and second backups are the point of truth, and a restore point, for the dataset.