The final update of the year accompanies the deployment of the latest version of the NDR User Interface – v20221216_16 is now deployed and operational.
We’ve made some great progress in this release that I expect will reach most users one way or another. These changes are largely based on user feedback, whether ad-hoc or in response to the UI/UX Review earlier in the year.
UI/UX Developments Continued
As presented at the recent NDR User Group meeting, our recent work development work has been focused on accessibility, presentation, usability and workflow – particularly in the Inventory and Data Request user interfaces (UIs) of Data Discovery.
Slides from the User Group meeting are accessible from the NSTA website:
https://www.nstauthority.co.uk/data-centre/national-data-repository-ndr/ndr-user-group-and-updates/
The Inventory UI is available to those users with the Company Data Manager role within a Data Reporting Group (usually a petroleum licensee). The Inventory UI lists enables companies to record whether information types were not acquired, or whether acquired information is unavailable. Information types are automatically indicated as being available if a file is present with the corresponding Classification Tag (C Tag).
There are Inventory UIs for each project type – the wellbore Inventory UI was already arranged to reflect the operational phases of a wellbore, and the information gathered during each. Now the seismic survey Inventory UI is also arranged to group related information types together, rather than by file format, and the site survey Inventory UI is broadly similar. We think these arrangements will assist users in identifying related information types, regardless of the file format. You can expect to see C Tags for seismic and site surveys set out in this way in the next version of our “Form and Manner” document.
Accessibility and usability changes to the Inventory UI’s include:
Removing the Red/Amber/Green colour coding to indicate availability. The UI/UX review highlighted the difficulties that can create for some users, so instead we’ve arranged the UI in a table style, with the status shown by a simple black circle in the relevant column.
Adding “sticky headers” to the columns in the table, similar to Freeze Panes in Excel, so the user can scroll vertically without losing the column labels for Available, Unavailable and Not Acquired.
Updated ‘guidance’ at the top of the page, adapted to reflect these changes.
General changes to layout of information on screen, making best use of the available space.
The Data Request UI is available to all users.
Anyone can use this workflow to raise a request to the NSTA for data to be made available. The NSTA reviews each request – those that are approved will usually be issued to the Data Reporting Group as a formal notice to report information.
Reporting requests can be addressed in several ways; either the information is uploaded to the NDR, existing information is reclassified to indicate that it is already available, or the Inventory can be updated to record that the requested information was not acquired or is somehow unavailable.
Previously the Data Request UIs for well, seismic and site surveys were all arranged by data format, with all PDF information types grouped together and so on. We have adapted the UIs for each Project type to align to the same layouts described above in the Inventory UIs.
Similarly the inaccessible colour coding has given way to a tabular layout, with simple icons to show availability of information, and the usability and layout changes have been applied here too. Again, we expect these changes will make it more straightforward for users to identify the types of information that they would like to request, and to navigate the workflow more easily.
Suggest Edit (Files Table) - again is available to all users, although only authorised user can actually make changes to certain metadata for NDR Projects and Files. We had feedback in the UI/UX Review that said the workflow to change, and in particular to add to the classification of a file, was inefficient for Data Managers.
It is quite possible that a single report includes more than one information type, which means that file should have two or more C Tags associated to it.Previously if a Data Manager wanted to add, say, a third C Tag they could do so, but they’d also need to reassign each of the C Tags that were already assigned. That would involve making a note of the C Tags on each file and making sure all three were added before submitting a change.
Now an additional C Tag can be added by “Ctrl-clicking” when selecting, for example, the third C Tag, i.e. the user simply needs to hold down their keyboard control key to retain the current C Tags and add a new one (or more…).
Project size is a column in the Project IDs Table that summarised the total volume of files associated to the Project.
There are approaching 17,000 Projects in the NDR, with at least one for each of the 12,500 plus offshore wellbores and most of the 5,000 odd surveys. Not all have data loaded to them, however most do, and until recently many of those that have data but had not been updated since the current service was launched had no value for project size in the table.
We have updated every Project to reflect the volume of files in each, making a more complete and consistent display of just how much valuable offshore data has been made available for reuse.
That brings the development of the NDR to a close for this year. I’m delighted to announce that all of these changes are now live and available in the latest version v20221216_16. My thanks go to the NSTA NDR Team and our service partners in Osokey and Moveout whose collective ingenuity and commitment to continuous improvement throughout the year has made these and many other changes reality for our user community.
And thanks to all of you who have given us formative feedback – the service needs to work for you, and I hope many of you will have seen your suggestions taken on board and implemented as we work through our development plan.
There’s more to come. We have several developments ongoing now that I look forward to sharing with you in the new year.
Andy Thompson
National Data Repository Manager
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