PRODUCT DESCRIPTION

THE CHALLENGE – HOW MUCH CAN WE REMEMBER?

Many properties (Parcels) - Each Parcel has many attributes. A land trust may be responsible for stewardship of any where from a few dozen to many hundreds of properties. Each property has many attributes relating to natural features, conservation purposes, use limitations and reserved rights

Many people (Contacts) – Each Contact has many attributes.

There are land owners, property managers, foresters, attorneys, stewards, grantors and grantees. Each one has a name, several phone numbers, and addresses and potentially multiple properties they are associated with.

Multiple Staff and rotating staff

For small land trusts with one or two staff and a hand full of properties, one person could remember each property and each owner. As the number of properties and staff grow, no one person can remember everything. When a key person leaves, the knowledge they have gained is hopefully documented in the files but is not easily transferred to new staff in a timely way.

As a land trust grows and there are several people monitoring easements it is important for the organization to
keep track of the overall progress. One centralized database allows this to happen without extra work.

Many site visits, phone calls and issues to track

Each property is monitored annually. There may be several additional visits and telephone calls if there is an issue with a property. Conservation Connections© provides a quick and easy means of seeing who had an activity relating to a property, when the activity occurred and what transpired. This can all be done at the desk without searching through the paper files. This capability allows anyone within the land trust to track monitoring progress through time and ensures that issues in need of follow-up are not forgotten. There is also the capability to establish a return visit schedule for whatever reason.

Rapid access to information for entire organization

As an organization grows, there are many people that may have a need to learn more about a property or a person. The list-search capability allows anyone within the land trust to quickly and easily learn about a property. This is especially valuable when a key person is out in the field or away from the office.

THE APPROACH

Basic concepts – Fields, Tables and Linked Tables

A field

is the smallest quantity of information stored. Examples of fields include:

For a person, individual fields might include; first name, last name, middle initial
For an address, individual fields might include; street number, street name, town, state, zip code

A table

is a collection related fields. Using the above example:

One table might be Name
Another table might be Address

Linked Tables - One to many relationships

Life gets complicated when one person may have several phone numbers, addresses or properties they are associated with. Linked Tables allow the database to accommodate the many complexities of managing the vast amount of data associated with a person or a property. Following the same example:

Name
Home Address
Work Address
Camp Address

CONTACTS AND PARCELS

Conservation Connections separates all information into two main categories, Contacts and Parcels. Contacts include all information relative to a person or organization including names, addresses, phone numbers, and affiliations. Parcels include all information relative to a particular property including size, location, easement terms, and monitoring history. Contacts and Parcels are linked. This allows the user to go back and forth between contacts and parcels seamlessly.

One person with many properties and one property with many people.

One of the great strengths of the linked table approach to managing data is avoiding the necessity for repetitive data entry. By example lets say that Jane Fernleaf owns several properties. Without linked tables, her personal information would be stored separately for each property. If she should change her phone number, you would need to locate it wherever she may have an interest. By using the linked tables, her personal information will be entered only once in the Contact table. If she changes her mailing address or phone number, it is only changed in that one location. This greatly simplifies keeping track of personal information in our rapidly changing world.

List–Search

Conservation Connections has two approaches to locating data that operate similarly. Whether looking for a Contact or a Parcel, the first screen is a List–Search function that allows the user to identify particular search criteria to locate the Contact or Parcel. For Parcels, this might include the Property Name, Town, Acreage, or Date Protected. For Contacts, this usually starts with last name. The List–Search function allows any user to locate the information they seek in seconds.

Contact List-Search Form

SECURITY

Depending upon the software package purchased and the size of your organization, the ability to make changes to the database can be controlled. For small organizations, the package allows all users to make changes to the data. For larger organizations there is the potential to limit the ability to make changes to a select few users while allowing the whole organization to view the information

The software also has a behind the scenes way of keeping track of who has changed data. This can greatly help the system administrator track down who has revised data. Hopefully this is for benign reasons however if errors start showing up in the data, this provision can identify further training needs and support quality control efforts.

It is essential that the computer be backed up regularly. Once your organization moves to electronic easement stewardship, you should also have confidence that all of your records are secured to a back up every night, preferably off site.

DATA ORGANIZATION – TABS AND GO BUTTONS, DOUBLE CLICK

There are approximately 100 data fields relating to Contacts and 150 data fields relating to Parcels. In order to avoid clutter on the screen and facilitate locating the information you need quickly, Conservation Connections uses a combination of Tabs, Go buttons and double click functions. These are evident in the screen images which are attached.

OUTPUT – REPORTS

Output of information can be obtained in three primary means. For listing functions, all of the sorted data can be printed as it appears on the screen. There is a complete report that reproduces all information about a property. Of greatest utility is a grouping of three individualized easement stewardship reports. One is for complete ground monitoring visits, one is an abbreviated form for specific task visits and the third is for telephone calls. The stewardship visit reports are stored within the system and also printed for hard copy storage in traditional files.