Social Tracker

Social tracking tools can be used to record night-time or sleep locations, social pairings or if you're really motivated, even every individual group change or separation.

Data collected provides information on who spends the most time with whom, where they spend the most time and how often moves and/or changes in social grouping occur.

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Configuring Locations

Before using the Social Tracker (Located on the Main Menu in Facilities), you must first establish "Locations." Locations consist of your pools, paddocks or exhibits where animals can be located.  In Social Tracker, Locations are unique to each Facility and can be different between two separate Facilities.   

1. To setup Locations, click on the Facility Settings button (gear icon) in the upper right corner.
2. Click on the "Social Tracker Locations" link.

3. Enter as many Locations as necessary. Click the plus (+) sign to add new rows.
4. Click Submit to save your new Locations. 

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Recording Daily Groupings and Access

1. Click on Social Tracker within the Animal menu on the left-hand Navigator panel. You'll see that Locations setup in the previous step are listed on the left and animals are listed in the far right column. Using the Social Tracker, Locations and Animals will be "combined" under defined "Groups" in the middle column.  

2. First, select a Location from the left column. A pop-up menu will be presented with existing Groups.  If this is the first time you've used Social Tracker, you'll need to create Groups. Groups can be called anything, for example "Boys" or "East" or "Savanna."
3. One you have at least one or two Groups defined, simply select that Group to add the Location to that grouping.

4. To add animals to that Group, simply select the animal you wish to combine and click on the Group where they are located.  Continue this process with both Locations and Animals until all are assigned to Groups. 

NOTE: If a social group has access to more than one pool (Location), then place both Locations in the same Group along with the Animals that have access.  Think of "Groups" as combinations of animals and pools/paddocks or exhibits where they have access. 

IMPORTANT: Changes will not be saved unless you hit "Submit" (click the green checkmark) after working in the Social Tracker tool. This design allows you to make as many changes to the arrangement as you need before any records are stored to the data tables. You MUST hit "Submit" to save changes before exiting the component.  

5. To remove a Group or replace/rename that Group, select each Animal and Location in the group and click "Unassign."  This will put the Locations back in the left column and the Animals back in the right-most column to be re-assigned to new Groups.  The now empty Group will automatically disappear or be removed from the center column.