* DEA Plugin Issue

[NickiP]

I was interested in looking at possibly using DEA for Census entry because of the file reloading lags I get with AS because of the size of my project (68k+). However in spite of installing CP's Burial DEA when I select "Prepare citation to existing source" and select a burial source in the sample project, I just get the message <No assistants found for this source type>. I am also get the same trying to run that and another DEA against my generic sources in my own project but wondered if that was something to do with my source records.

Should the Burial DEA work against existing sources in the sample project please? If yes, any ideas why, in spite of confirming I have some DEA plugins installed via Browse/Install Data Entry Assistants, I am unable to select it to run?

If it doesn't run against existing sources, are there any that do so I can at least test against the sample project that it works.

At the moment I feel like giving up and just putting up with the reload lag in AS, which I really like as have customised it to just do basic entry for Census entries along with a source record but which I find frustratingly slow to use.

Or am I completely misunderstanding how DEAs work?

Thanks

Nicola

[sbell95]

I am very interested in hearing more experienced users' responses to your query, as I have had some of the same issues.

The way I got the census DEA to work with my custom census source templates was to add fields for region, year, location, address and head of household -- once I added those, the census DEA became available to select and run for a citation.

Screenshot 2021-10-07 130248.jpg (27.03 KiB) Viewed 1753 times

It may be that the birth/death/burial DEAs need similar fields in order to run? The description for the civil registration index DEA says "The required minimum Source information is Type, Region, Name and Date." But it's definitely not clear from that description what fields (and where) are required to be created in order to enable a particular DEA...

Screenshot 2021-10-07 130543.jpg (64.48 KiB) Viewed 1753 times

[ColeValleyGirl]

DEAs typically constrain (1)which source types they will work with (i.e. which templates the sources must be based on), and (2) which fields must be completed within the template for the DEA to be able to function.

In the case of the DEAs currently available in the store, they only work with sources created from specific templates within the Essentials collection -- not with Generic sources. If you're working with a source that doesn't meet a particular DEAs criteria, it won't show in the list of available DEAs.

I'm working on a set of DEAs that will work with ANY source, but progress is slow because of other commitments and the odd health hiccup. There are a couple of prototypes available for download at Some new Data Entry Assistant plugins for testing (V7) (18293) if anyone cares to take them for a spin. They work, but be aware they are prototypes and the final versions will look a little different.

[sbell95]

DEAs typically constrain (1)which source types they will work with (i.e. which templates the sources must be based on), and (2) which fields must be completed within the template for the DEA to be able to function.

So is it a matter of the user doing trial and error to work out which fields need to be in a source template in order for a particular DEA to function with it? (This is what I have been doing.) None of the DEAs I have installed (from Calico Pie or otherwise) specify in their description what is required to make the DEA work -- either with a custom source template or an existing Essentials collection one... unless I'm missing something!

[ColeValleyGirl]

The existing DEAs aren't designed to work with a custom source template -- although they can be tricked into doing so by naming the source template the same as the equivalent one in the Essentials collection, or by running them from the Plugin window.

The guidance for plugin authors writing DEAs says:

Before it does anything, however, it [the DEA] should put up a message, telling the user what it is about to do, and if appropriate, what it expects the user to have already done. It should give the user the opportunity to cancel. Also, it should check the circumstances in which it is being called, and inform the user if information it needs is missing. If it is run from the Citation Window, the prepared citation field in the header (which also contains a pointer to the relevant source record) will not be blank; but if it is run from the Plugin window, that information may be blank. The plugin must not make any assumptions. It needs to check everything. If it is designed to work with a particular source template, it cannot assume that the user's Source Template record is anything like the one that it is expecting. If it is expecting, and requiring, that the Source Template consists of particular field definitions, with particular field types, it must check that these are there, and match expectations. If they don't, it must inform the user what the problem is, and take appropriate action (which will normally mean exiting without doing anything further).

All the plugins in the store check that their required fields exist and are populated, (including validating the values in some fields -- e.g. Region or Type for Record Birth Data (UK)) -- and will notify you via an error message if that isn't the case when you run them.

If you need to modify a custom template to meet a DEAs requirements (by adding fields), inspect the standard template that the DEA is designed to work with for the fields referred to in the error message and replicate them in your template. The DEAs available so far (for recording data) are designed to work with one or more the the following Essentials templates:

• Church Register - Baptism, Marriage or Burial
• Civil Registration Certificate - Birth, Marriage or Death
• Civil Registration Index - Birth, Marriage or Death
• Census Return

They also typically check a Type field and a Region field, so that you don't use e.g. a Burial DEA for a Baptism source, or a Uk-centric DEA for a non-UK source.