* Another approach to planning and tracking research

For users to report plugin bugs and request plugin enhancements; and for authors to test new/new versions of plugins, and to discuss plugin development (in the Programming Technicalities sub-forum). If you want advice on choosing or using a plugin, please ask in General Usage or an appropriate sub-forum.
Post Reply
User avatar
ColeValleyGirl
Megastar
Posts: 5465
Joined: 28 Dec 2005 22:02
Family Historian: V7
Location: Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Contact:

Another approach to planning and tracking research

Post by ColeValleyGirl »

There are a variety of approaches to planning and tracking research, as described in various posts in these forums and at Create Work In Progress or Research To Do Lists, so I thought I'd add my way of working to the options out there.

I use a Task attribute and create a new Task for each item of Research with a short Title (e.g. Locate Birth Registration, Find Burial, Search 1871 census), so an Individual will end up with many Tasks in various stages of completeness. Each Task can have a Status (Planned | In progress | Complete| Pending) and a Priority (1 | 2 | 3) as well as a more detailed Objective for the Task. And of course there's a Notes section for tracking progress of the lack of it.

I use a Research Planner plugin to define a set of Templates for Research Tasks (searches) that I carry out regularly, and to create a chosen subset of Tasks for an Individual very quickly and easily. Working this way I can also capture the details of an 'unusual' search in a Template in case I ever need to repeat it -- the sort of thing where I have to learn a whole new set of records for a single search and don't want to forget what I learned.

And of course, there are a set of associated queries and reports.

If anyone else is interested it's documented in more detail at Research Planner, with installation instructions and all the downloads you need. Also documented there are ways to customise the approach to make it better fit the way you do things, especially if you already have a preferred Attribute for tracking research, or want to use different fields (within reason).

If you prefer to have a single Attribute per Individual to record all your research, then this approach probably isn't of interest to you.

Any problems? I'll be here...
Post Reply