SENSORICA CAS tutorials
This page contains links to tutorials for SENSORICA's new contribution accounting system (CAS).
Video Tutorial - How SENSORICA's NRP-CAS captures economic contributions
User-level actions
Contribution log - SENSORICA case
This doc explains how to log cash in and out for SENSORICA admin.
You need to have an account into SENSORICA's NRP-CAS and be logged in. For now, accounts are only created by some trusted members of the community (Tibi, Bob, Jim, Lynn etc.). This will most probably change in the near future. When you log in, you will be taken to the My work page.
At this stage in the development of the NRP-CAS, the system takes tracks 3 types of contributions: time-based, financial, and material.
To access all activity, go to SENSORICA's NRP-CAS All Work page, chose a time period and click Refresh to see all the work in progress.
All activity happens within ventures. You cannot log anything that is not associated with an existing venture! If you are working on something that doesn't belong to any SENSORICA ventures, ask yourself if you should create a new venture. Ask an admin user, Tibi, Jim or Bob to help you with it.
Log time-based contributions
With no clear deliverable
There are two categories of 'time-based contributions': those who have a clear deliverable and those who don't have a clear deliverable, or a deliverable that it worth tracking. We call no-production work work that doesn't have a clear deliverable. Office work, for example, is continuous, adds value to the network or to a venture over its entire life. Objective indicators of value are time and the type of activity performed. In the near future, we'll add tools for subjective evaluation, like peer-rating for example. Open Log non-production video tutorial.
To log time-based contributions that don't have clear deliverables use the No-production page. You can find it on My work page. You navigate there by clicking on My Work top tab, and after that by clicking on the Lon non-production work button.
- Select the 'Date'.
- Select the 'Type of work' in the list, which is a name that best describes the your activity. If nothing in there describes your activity contact someone (Tibi, Bob, etc.) who can add a new item to the list (this requires admin access).
- Select the 'venture'. A venture gives a context to your work. There are two categories of ventures, those that have a market orientation (ex. Mosquito, Manipulators, 3D printer, etc.), and those related to sustaining the community as a whole (Building SENSORICA, Infrastructure virtual, Infrastructure physical, etc.)
- Enter the amount of time spent on the task.
- Make sure that Credit for value equations is checked
- Enter a short 'Description'. It is important to provide enough details, otherwise someone will contest your log and you run the risk of losing your equity associated with this contribution
- Enter a URL that links to the digital trace of your work, something that represents your work, a document, a video, a picture, etc. This might not apply to your activity. It is always good to link to something to support your description and strengthen your claim for fluid equity.
All activity happens within ventures. You cannot log anything that is not associated with an existing venture! If you are working on something that doesn't belong to any SENSORICA ventures, ask yourself if you should create a new venture. Ask an admin user, Tibi, Jim or Bob to help you with it.
If you do work for maintaining or developing the SENSORICA network/community, i.e. not associated with a venture that is generating revenue or is intended to do so, you chose the Building SENSORICA venture. If you do work on developing the virtual infrastructure (develop the NRP, website, CRM, etc.), you chose Infrastructure-Virtual. If you do work on the physical infrastructure (maintenance in the lab, renovations, etc.), you chose Infrastructure-Physical.
You can also use 'To-Dos' to log no-production work. You can create a To-Do for yourself or call someone else to do something, or enter one that is unassigned. Find To-Dos on the My work page.
With clear deliverable
All contributions that have clear deliverables worth tracking must be logged in a Process, in SENSORICA's NRP-CAS. See Lynn's presentation - made on Nov 04, 2013.
This is the case of R&D activities, fundraising activities, even infrastructure building activities. Deliverables are resources tracked by the system. These resources are created in processes. The logging happens in the context of a Process, which is associated with a venture. Therefore, before you can log your activity for creating a resource you need to create a Process. There is no Process without a venture. If you are working on something that doesn't belong to any SENSORICA ventures, ask yourself if you should create a new venture. Ask an admin user, Tibi, Jim or Bob to help you with it.
All activity happens within ventures. You cannot log anything that is not associated with an existing venture! If you are working on something that doesn't belong to any SENSORICA ventures, ask yourself if you should create a new venture. Ask an admin user, Tibi, Jim or Bob to help you with it.
There are two ways to create processes.
- Create an individual process. Use this for small ventures that create something tangible. Start with the Demand page to create processes, to which you can navigate by clicking the Demand tab.
- If you just want to create a simple task within an existing venture click on the Plan work button. This will create an individual Process
- If you are planning a more complex activity, made of multiple tasks that are different from each others, click on the Plan work using recipe button. This will create a chain of Processes. Recipes are also used to deploy venture development methodologies, from conceptualization, to design considerations, to design, to prototyping, product design and manufacturing.
See also Labnotes. Labnotes also appear on Labnotes history where you can re-open old labnotes in case you missed something.
Purchase contributions
Purchases create or replenish resources.
- Go to and click on Supply tab
- Click on Purchase button.
- File:Purchasae Contributions form.JPGHow to log expenses contributions
- The Receipt button allows you to itemize your Receipt (add all items in the order). This is about stuff that was purchased
- You'll be presented with the list of Resource types. If you don't find it you need to create it - go to Resource Type and create it, come back, refresh the page and continue. You can add as many items to it as needed.
- The Expenses button allows you to put in other expenses related to the order that is not stuff. This can be Taxes, Shipping, Customs, etc. You can add as many items to it as needed. If you go to the store to get the resource and use some gas for your car, you can enter that expense here. For the time it takes you to go there, you enter it in the Work section.
- The Payment is the total of the bill.
- If the you need to pay customs on it after the order arrives you create another "Payment" on the same order. On that item you can chose a different supplier which in this example would be Canadian customs.
- If we split the purchase enter more than one entry to Payments
- The Work button allows you to log shopping time, or time you take to get it, if you go to a store.
Receipts + Expenses = Payment
Every tax is entered manually.
Only enter Receipts if you want to track the resource.
Expense contributions
Example of use - paying rent.
- Go to and click on Supply tab
- Click on Expenses button.
Payment can be broken down into more than one contribution, if multiple affiliates shared the cost. The sum of all payments should equal Expense.
NOTE: The list "Type of expense" is a Resource type. To add an element to it you need to create the Resource Type. This list is filtered by Material item/Admin expenses from Resource types page.
Changing contributions
All of your time contributions, using any logging method, will appear on 'My Contributions' (a button on My work page), where you can change or delete them.
Coordination
Link to All work page.
Todo list
...
Today
...
Timeline
...
Planning
Go to Recipe page
History
...
Maintenance level
Tutorial for NRP-CAS setup for a new network. A number of these tasks also are ongoing on a maintenance level.
Install the NRP-CAS
Django deployment instructions for a variety of server environments You can installed Django using Apache and mod-wsgi
Create new venture
Change the place of a venture in the venture hierarchy
- NOTE that in the NRP we still use "project" for "venture"
- Go to Agents page
- Click Control/F and search the venture name.
- Click on the venture to open its own page.
- Click the Maintain associations link.
- Go down the page and find "Association type", "child of" and change the name of the venture in the "Associated Agent" list
- Click Save
Maintaining Resource Types
Delete Resource Type
From UI
From admin
Open Resource Type page in admin. Find the Resource Type you want to delete. Select it and go in top and chose Delete.
If this Resource Type is used in processes, the system will list all these processes and ask you if you want to delete all. NOTE: Deleting the resource deletes all these processes, which is not a good idea. In this case, you might want to replace this Resource Type by another one. If that is the case, click every process to open it in a different tab, find the Resource Type entry and change it to the new. Save it and close this tab. Go back to the main tab to delete the Resource Type and reload this page. The item you just modified must disappear as you reload. Repeat the same until no process is shown and you can delete the ResourceType.
Change the resource type of a resource
This is possible in admin - find resource and modify its resource type.
Delete resource
To the Inventory, find the resource, click on Event History and find the Adjust Quantity button.
Economic exchanges
Tutorials
- NRP exchange types concepts and tutorial
- NRP supply concepts and tutorial
- NRP exchanging resources concepts and tutorial
Open Exchanges page in admin in NRP-CAS Open economic events page in admin in NRP-CAS
Delete exchanges
You can delete events from admin, but IT IS NOT RECOMMENDED because the system will not decrements/increment resources.
- To delete Material contribution exchanges go to Material Contribution report page, find the exchange, open it, delete all individual events in it, come back to the report page and if you are a super user you will see a delete button next to that exschange, press it and done.
- To delete Financial contribution events go to Financial Contribution report page, find the exchange, open it, delete all individual events in it, come back to the report page and if you are a super user you will see a delete button next to that exchange, press it and done.
Embed stats from NRP-CAS on the website
The SENSORICA website is a Google Sites. We use iframe (a standard gadget in Google Sites) to embed data from NRP-CAS.
% of total time per member for every venture
You only need to replace "project-name" with the name of the venture, which is the venture as it appears in NRP-CAS, in lower case with the words separated by dashes.
ToDo - Tibi to fix the following ---> iframes are not supported by new Google Sites To insert an iframe into a venture's page open that page in edit mode, go to the location where you want to insert it and click on Insert/more gadgets. Chose the iframe gadget like in the picture and insert the URL in the URL field.
Every affiliate's's role in every venture
You only need to replace "project-name" with the name of the venture, which is the venture as it appears in NRP-CAS, in lower case with the words separated by dashes.
ToDo - Tibi to fix the following ---> iframes are not supported by new Google Sites To insert an iframe into a venture's's page open that page in edit mode, go to the location where you want to insert it and click on Insert/more gadgets. Chose the iframe gadget like in the picture and insert the URL in the URL field.
To design new metrics
we got, so far:
- time contributions
- deliverables
- consumed resources
- used resources
- citations
- R&D and customer orders
- processes
And pretty soon, financial and other resource contributions.
And all of the above could be organized in time series or by venture or order or resource type or facet or process or some combination.
We could also derive lateness and ontime and quality measures once the system gets a little more data and more under control.
Visuals
- https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Gallery
- http://www.labnol.org/software/find-right-chart-type-for-your-data/6523/
- http://labs.juiceanalytics.com/chartchooser/index.html
- http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/cbi/v10r2m0/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.swg.ba.cognos.ug_cr_rptstd.10.2.0.doc%2Fc_cr_rptstd_chrts_appndx_chart_types_appendix.html
Bar charts examples:
- http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/3886208
- http://www.highcharts.com/demo/bar-stacked
- http://blog.visual.ly/how-groups-stack-up-when-to-use-grouped-vs-stacked-column-charts/
Extract data from NRP-CAS
Extract contributions from ventures
This is only possible in admin now Home › Valueaccounting › Economic events
Filter by context agent in the right side filter list, ventures (projects) are now context agents. That filter in admin is totally crazy because it includes all agents, not just context agents, but it will get the job done.
Exploring data
Here are places in NRP where you can export data into CSV files and import them into Keshif: From the contributions page of any venture, for example: http://nrp.sensorica.co/accounting/contributions/326/
Financial contributions: http://nrp.sensorica.co/accounting/exchanges/
Income distributions: http://nrp.sensorica.co/accounting/distributions/
We can make more csv export opportunities, but let us know if Keshif is useful. It's not the only service of its kind, but it seemed to work, while another one I tried did not.
Delete a process
Go here
You find this page from the Miscellaneous. This page is only accessible to super users.
Add new element to non-production, Type of work list
Go to the Resource Types page, hit the Create new Resource Type button and complete the properties of this new resource type.
- Chose a proper name for it.
- Unit - each [not so sure...]
- Unit of use - each [not so sure...]
- Substitutable - non
- Inventory rule - does not apply
- Description - please decompose this activity into sub-activities. If there are alternative interpretations make sure you chanel the user into the proper one.
- Accounting reference - [not sure...]
- Deliverable - [based on your case]
- Domain - [based on your case]
- Material item - [based on your case]
- Source - [based on your case]
- Work - Non-production work
Remember, types of work are just resource types. For example, "Non-production work" is a type, or a category. This category has elements like: Writing, TRaining, Documentation, etc.
You can add a new "Type of work" from the Resource type page.
And give it a non-production Work facet value, but I think nothing else.
Modify resource type facets
go to the Resource Type facets page. You need to have admin permission.
Change Domains
In admin, Home › Valueaccounting › Facets › Domain
See direct link
Create product recipe
add content - for now ask Francois, Tibi, Lynn or Bob.
Reset user password
In admin, go to Users, and then the select the user you want to change. Under their password (which is encrypted so that nobody including me can see it) there's a little link to a form where you can change the password.
NRP-CAS cleanup
See also the misc page for superusers
Adding purchase processes to resources
You can start from the cleanup resource page to find orphan resources. But some resources might have work on them and be associated with processes already.
Go to Syply page and go to Financial contribution page. From there you can open financial contributions and edit them. You add the contribution to a resource.
Produce HELP content for NRP pages
Go HERE. You can add more pages to create help content by pressing the Add help + button.
Patterns and facets
They are behind menus in forms. See Process Pattern tips and Faceted Classification and Process Patterns
You can use the Patterns page and the Facets page, which are more user friendly than working in admin.
Add new agent
Go to Agents, click Create new agent. After you go to the Agent's page and click on Maintain Associations. Setup is a member of - SENSORICA. After that you need to create a user account. Only superusers have access to this function from the Agane page. See Bob's notes below.
from Bob: I added the ability for superusers to create users for agents on the agent page, and you can add new agents on the All Agents page, http://nrp.sensorica.co/accounting/agents/
And I removed the "create user and agent" item from the account menu.
Eventually, the "create user" button will become "invite agent to create user" or something like that, but that requires a bunch more work.
Create a value equation
NOTE: this is still in development stage, the instructions will change in the future.
Go to Miscellaneous page / Value Equation List - List, create, edit from here, and create a new value equation.
Filters: they work on Orders (by name), Process type, or Resource type. Example: for the 3D course, we can create a backet for the Initiation roles filtered by an Order.
Create bucket and create bucket rule.