User Guide

This user guide has been developed to walk you through the key functions of DaRT. This includes basic navigation of the DaRT, setting-up and organizing a national working space and guidance on queries and tasks that can be done in the DaRT dashboard by a national team.

The user guide is structured as follows:

• “Getting started” provides information about how to get access and log in to DaRT, be it for testing or registering a national working space.

• “Dashboard” gives an overview on what you see in DaRT and how to edit, search, import and export information in DaRT. These functionalities can be used by all users of a registered working space.
• “Organizing the national working space” describes the administration of the DaRT working space. This includes the management of user accounts, workspace settings and the inclusion and mapping of NBSAPs. Most functionalities of this section are restricted to users acting as “Country Managers”.

Please help us to improve the User Guide by providing feedback and questions through our contact form.

 

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Getting started

Provides information about how to get access and log in to DaRT, be it for testing or registering a national working space.

1. How can I register to test DaRT?

  

DaRT includes a pre-populated national working space for testing purposes: the "UNEP Testland". 

In "UNEP Testland" you are granted the full user rights of a DaRT Country Manager. This gives you access to the DaRT Administration an experience how to create a DaRT-Team, how to insert an NBSAP and how to link it to global targets.

Further, you have access to the dashboard, alike a DaRT Contributor, where you can import, manipulate and tag information, conduct searches and export information to your desktop.

To get access to "UNEP Testland":

1. Go to the contact form;
2. Identify yourself;
3. Request access to UNEP Testland; and
4. Push the send message button.

You will receive your credentials from the DaRT User support to your email address.

2. What browser works best with DaRT?

The DaRT is designed and optimized to work on most browsers including:

• Google Chrome,
• Mozilla Firefox,
• Microsoft Edge,
• Apple Safari,
• Opera,
• etc.

If you have any issue with a browser, please contact us using the contact form.

3. Is a national working space registered for my country?

The countries using a DaRT working space are displayed at the bottom of the homepage. You can search the list by clicking the arrows left and right of the flags.

4. How do I register a national working space for my country?

Requests for registration of new national working spaces are accepted from National Focal Points of biodiversity-related conventions. The process is the same as for requesting access to testing instance, "UNEP Testland" (see here).

To request a new working space for your country:

1. Go to the contact form;
2. Identify yourself and your role;
3. Request access to DaRT for your country; and
4. Push the send message button.

You will receive your credentials from the DaRT User Support to your email address.

5. How do I register an account for an existing national working space?

To register an account to an existing national working space:

1. Press the "Log in" button;
2. Select "Register now" at the bottom of the page; 
3. Complete the form; and
4. Press "Register".

Your application is sent to the DaRT Country Manager, who will approve or not approve your request.

As soon as the Country Manager approves your request, you will receive an automated mail with instructions to your registered email address.

6. How do I log in / out?

To log in, press the "Log in" button in the top righthand corner of the page.

To log out, press your name in the top righthand corner of the page. The "Log out" button appears in the dropdown menu.

7. Forgot your password?

If you forgot your password:

1. Click Log in;
2. Press the "Forgot password?" button;
3. Enter your registered email address;
4. Press the "Reset password" button.

Password reset instructions will be sent to your registered email address.

 

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The Dashboard

The dashboard is the central element in the use of the DaRT. It is in the dashboard where all information included in your working space displayed, where you search or filter for information, add new or download contents to your device. To access the dashboard you need to log in to DaRT.

The dashboard is organized as follows:

 

	Number of items included in your working space, Sorting function (by date, relevance) and export function
	When opening the dashboard, all items included in your working space are displayed
	The content of items can be downloaded, opened in a new tab, edited or deleted right from the dashboard
	Functionalities to add new items to DaRT
	Search the content of your DaRT
	Filter the content of your DaRT

 

 Adding and editing items 

8. What kind of items and information can I add into DaRT?

DaRT is designed in a way to accommodate the management of all kind of knowledge with a focus on policy-based information related to the implementation of the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs). 

Information can be added according to five types of items:

Link: This item is suited to safeguard weblinks you quote in national reports or to relevant sources of information for the preparations of reports (e.g. databases, information portals, monitoring programs, policies etc.).

Text snippet: is suited for brief quotable passage out of a report. Even though the item could be used to collect many kinds of information, it is highly recommended to include only text from approved and published reports. This helps securing the quality of the content of your DaRT working space.

There is no text limit defined for the snippets to accommodate the different reporting formats of the conventions, however, please refrain to include unnecessarily lengthy texts in DaRT, to save disk space.

Image: To collect e.g. graphs, photos used to illustrate national reports. An image can be integrated into the working space using a weblink or by uploading it (max. 64MB; png, gif, jpg, jpeg).

Files: The upload of small files helps to collect and organize files used for national reporting purposes. This may include e.g. submissions by your government, assessments and analysis on a relevant topic quoted in a national report, etc..

Indicator: To collect and organize weblinks to national indicators.

9. What should I consider prior to starting to include items in the working space?

Prior starting to include content to your DaRT working space, make sure that your national biodiversity strategy and action plans is/are is properly included in the working space and mapped to the global and regional strategies.

For further information see below: Including the national biodiversity strategy and action plans (NBSAPs).

10. How do I include a new item or open an existing one?

To include new content to your DaRT: 

• go to the "add item" section  and select the type of item you wish to add, click the button - a new form opens.

 

To edit an existing item: 

• c lick the   "edit item" button at the bottom of the text snippet

 

To edit an existing item in a new tab:

• click the "open in a new tab" button - the new tab opens
• c lick the   "edit item" button at the bottom of the text snippet

 

Paste your information into the form or edit its content.

Note: Rather than editing a text, especially if the text has been approved by an authority, you may wish to attach a comment on an item. 

Always save your changes prior to go back to the dashboard!

11. Can the text of an item be formatted?

Formatting of a text is possible for "Text snippets". In the form you find:

1. basic formatting options (bold, italics, underscore);
2. an option to include a textlink;
3. options for bulleted or numbered lists;
4. an option for block quote;
5. The possibility of including an image; and
6. a spell-checker.

The spell-check included in DaRT, however, works with a limited number of languages only (see drop down menu of the spell-check icon). If your language is not supported by the spell-checker, you may wish using the one included in your browser.

Always save your changes prior to go back to the dashboard!

12. How do I map an item to my NBSAP and global strategies?

Click into the text box "Strategic plans" and a dropdown menu with the national NBSAPs, the regional and global strategic plans appears.

1. Select the strategy you want to map your item with (alternatively you can type the name of the strategy into the text box);
2. Select the goal of the strategy you want to map your item with;
3. Select the target of the strategy you want to map your item with.

Repeat this for each strategy/goal/target.

It is recommended to always start with the mapping to your NBSAPs. As your NBSAPs is mapped to the global regional strategies, this mapping will allow your colleagues to find the information under different global and regional strategies (even if yourself do not know these).

Always save your changes prior to go back to the dashboard!

13. What are the different tags I can use?

Properly tagging the content facilitates the retrieval of information. 

To this purpose, 4 categories of tags are included in Dart:

Species: Here you may enter the name of species to which the content of the item refers to. Currently, there is no predefined taxonomy included in DaRT, as biodiversity-related conventions use different ones. However, to facilitate concise use in DaRT, the names already used for tagging items appear as soon as you click the text box.

Reporting obligations: Here you may select the reporting obligation from which your information comes from. The selection of multiple obligations is possible by clicking the button "add another item" below the text box.

Glossary terms: Use the glossary terms defined by the InforMEA to better identify the content of your item. Start typing a keyword into the text box and selection of predefined terms will appear. The use of a predefined list of terms facilitates the concise use of keywords by multiple users.

Freehand tags: Use freehand tags to identify content according to national needs, e.g. geographic designations such as specific protected areas, reporting processes at regional/national level, submissions, etc. If your term does not exist in this list, free type and press enter and it will be added to the DaRT database.

Always save your changes prior to go back to the dashboard!

14. Why is defining the language of an item important?

Specifying the language helps on the one hand to better identify the content of your item, especially, when your country is submitting reports in different languages and on the other is of crucial importance when you share the information included in DaRT with other (multilingual) tools such as the CBD Bioland Tool. 

The languages your DaRT working space supports is defined by the country manager when defining the workspace settings (to learn more about managing the workspace settings, click here).

Always save your changes prior to go back to the dashboard!

15. What are the privacy settings for?

The privacy settings allow you to define with whom you wish to share the content of an item. The following settings are available

Private: With this setting, the content of an item can be viewed by the members of the national DaRT team only, i.e. for those people who's registration has been approved by the country manager. This is the default setting for an item as the national working spaces are private by definition.

However, you may wish to share the content of an item:

Public: With this setting, the content of an item can be harvested through an API by any other system (e.g. by InforMEA). Further, the URL of an item created when opening an item in a new tab, can be shared with people who normally have no access to your national working space.

Shared with Bioland: With this setting, the content of your DaRT item can be harvested by your national Bioland instance to display the content on your national Bioland website.

Always save your changes prior to go back to the dashboard!

16. I have a series of items to add - is there a way to import them at once?

Yes, DaRT includes a bulk import form to support the import of multiple items at once.

The bulk import form is available by:

1. go to the "Add item" section;
2. add an item (it does not matter which kind of item);
3. Click the "bulk import form" button which is located in the first line to be redirected to "Import content";
4. Download the sample Excel sheet, which guides you on how to fill in the sheet;
5. Fill in the sheet and save it to your device.

To upload the information:

Select the sheet you saved to your device and click "Import". The items you imported are now included in the dashboard. Proceed with editing and tagging the items.

 

Searching the dashboard  

There are two options to search the content of your working space: search content and the filtering of the content according to items and tags. 

17. Search contents - in which contents does it search? 

The "Search content"   is a powerful tool that allows you to search the whole content of your working space, e.g. according to

• Your keywords;
• Years (months or a specific date) an item was uploaded;
• Names of contributors (also available as a filter option);
• etc..

Please note, search content does not apply to the text included in files you uploaded.

18. How do I clear the search content?

To clear the "Search content", click the "Clear filters" button, which appears next to "Filter items" as soon as filters are applied.

19. How does filtering by items work? 

When opening the dashboard, you find in "Filter items" a list and the number of items included in your working space . If an item type does not display in this list, you did not use so far.

To filter the content of your working space according to item types, select one or more item types you wish to display. Selecting several filters will result in displaying all items of the type you selected, i.e. for instance all items that correspond to the type "Text snippets" or the type "Links".

To clear the filter used, click the "Clear filters" button, which appears next to "Filter items" as soon as filters are applied.

20. How do I filter items by other terms?

1. When clicking into the text boxes (glossary, species, reporting obligations etc.) the list of the tags used in your working space appears.
2. Select the tag you want to use.
3. The number of items corresponding to you tag is displayed in the "Item type" and the items shown in the dashboard;
4. Select additional filters to refine your search (potential additional filters are automatically displayed in the text boxes)

The search result displayed includes items that correspond to "tag1" and "tag2".

To clear the filter used, click the "Clear filters" button, which appears next to "Filter items" as soon as filters are applied.

21. Can freehand search be combined with using filters?

Yes, you can combine the use of filters and search content to refine your search.

To clear the filter used, click the "Clear filters" button, which appears next to "Filter items" as soon as filters are applied.

22. How do I clear filters and search content?

To clear the freehand search, click the "Clear filters" button, which appears next to "Filter items" as soon as filters are applied.

 

Exporting and sharing information 

23. How can I export my search results?

To export your search results, click the "Export results" button in the dashboard. 

An Excel-file is generated and automatically downloaded to your device.

24. Can I share information by using the URL of an item?

When opening an item in a new tab, an URL specific to the item is created. You can use this URL to organize information when preparing/drafting a report or share the content with colleagues having access to your national working space (i.e. have a registration to your working space).

 

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Organizing the national working space

Organizing a national DaRT team

The aim of DaRT is to bring together national experts and collaborators to collect, organize, store and share information and knowledge for reporting purposes. This section provides information on how to grant access to DaRT for your national experts and collaborators and how how to organize user accounts.

Information on registering accounts is found in the getting started section above.

25. Which user roles are available in DaRT?

For national users, DaRT proposes the following two user roles:

• Contributors post and contents, view items added by other users, leave comments and can export information. Contributors can edit and delete the contents they created.

• Country managers can additionally accept new user accounts, add tags to national reports, delete users or content (from all users) and manage the national strategy.

For the administration of the site, there is an additional role, the "Platform manager", who is in charge of creating national working spaces and providing user support. The Platform manager includes and maps global and regional strategies and administrates the content of the homepage.

To contact the Platform manager, please use the contact form.

26. How do I best organize my DaRT team using the different user roles?

The requirements on the organization of a DaRT team vary from country to country and the number of experts and collaborators contributing to the content of the working spaces. The following points should therefore be understood as general recommendations:

• Define responsibilities. Knowledge and information management is a long-term task. To secure the adequate management of the DaRT working space over years, the elaboration of a DaRT concept is recommended, which describes the goal of maintaining a national working space (for which conventions?), identifies the organizations/ministries collaborating in DaRT, identifies the experts and collaborators contributing content as well as the form of collaboration within the national DaRT team (e.g. within a national biodiversity taskforce, meetings of national focal points, standalone initiative, etc.).

• Involve experts in national reporting and National Focal Points of conventions to ensure the flow of information between global/regional and national levels.

• Limit the number of Country managers to a minimum to avoid that an agreed mapping of the NBSAPs to global/regional goals and targets is repeatedly modified or content of the working space is deleted without consensus between organizations/ministries.

• Note, the role of a Country manager can be granted on temporary basis to facilitate specific tasks, e.g. for the mapping of an NBSAPs to global/regional targets or for cleaning-up the working space if necessary.

• Use only personalized accounts as foreseen in DaRT. Creating generic accounts and sharing passwords may seem an attractive way for a simple user management. However, you will rapidly lose track of who has access to the national working space and who contributed content to it. 

• Agree on the kind of information to be included into the national working space to secure the quality of its content. It is recommended to include only agreed texts/links/indicators/images/documents, i.e. information already published in national reports. Therewith you also avoid overcrowding your working space.

27. Where can I see who has access to the national working space? Where can I edit my user profile?

Click on your name in the top right corner of the page. In the dropdown menu you find:

• Your account: an overview of your account

• Edit account: opportunities to edit your account, change your password (use a strong one!) and upload a user picture

• My team: overview of national experts and collaborators having access to the national working space.

28. A collaborator left the DaRT team. How should I proceed with her/his account?

When a collaborator leaves the DaRT team, you may wish to disable/cancel the respective account. to do so:

1. Click your name in the top right corner of the page;
2. Select "My team" from the dropdown menu;
3. Select the account you wish to delete/cancel by clicking the name of the account holder and go to the tab "Cancel account".

You are provided with three methods to cancel an account:

Disable the account and keep its content: The accountholder can no longer log in DaRT. The content she/he added remains in the dashboard. This method is preferred for users that contributed content to DaRT.

Disable the account and unpublish its content: The accountholder can no longer log in DaRT. The content she/he added is still saved in the working space, however, is no longer visible in the dashboard.

Delete the account and its content: This option might be suited for accountholders that did not contribute content to the DaRT, but used the functionalities of the tool. Before you choose this method, please make sure that you really want to delete any content - this action cannot be undone.

 

Managing the workspace settings - languages

29. Which languages can be used in DaRT and how can I adjust them?

The DaRT working spaces are prepared to accommodate the six UN languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Chinese. Additional languages can be integrated, e.g. other national languages.

To define the language settings:

1. Click your name in the top right corner of the page;
2. Select "Administration" from the dropdown menu; and
3. "Manage workspace settings" in the menu that appears.

The first language in this list will be the default language when adding content, i.e. it should be the language in which your country submits most of its national reports. Use the  to drag and rearrange the languages. Don't forget to save your changes.

If you wish to add content to the dashboard in other languages than the predefined ones, click the "Add another item" button, specify the language to be added and save your changes.

 

Including the national biodiversity strategy and action plans

You must be logged in as country manager to perform the steps described below.

30. How do I include a NBSAPs into DaRT?

As a first step, you need to create a folder, where you will include the elements of your NBSAP:

1. Click your name in the top right corner of the page;
2. Select "Administration" from the dropdown menu; and
3. "Manage national strategy" in the menu that appears.
4. Click the green "Add National strategies" button and fill in the form and save your content.

Tips:

• Name: Fill in the name of your NBSAPs
• Description: Include a description of your NBSAP, consider including a link to the NBSAP document or leave it empty 
• Image: The image you can upload here (e.g. the cover of your strategy) will display in the "Strategies" page of the DaRT
• ID: It is recommended to apply ID to strategic elements of the NBSAP (e.g. mission, goals, targets, etc.). You can omit the ID here.
• Prefix: Use a short prefix (e.g. your country code), the prefix that will show up in the tag listing of your dashboard
• Strategy item type: leave empty
• Mapped regional/global strategies: leave empty

31. How do I reflect the structure of the NBSAP in DaRT?

After having created a folder for your NBSAP, you can reflect the structure, hierarchy and content of your NBSAP by adding child elements according to your needs. 

The following three examples illustrate how the structure of an NBSAP can be built in DaRT:

 

Tips:

• When including your NBSAP into your DaRT working space, you can establish the structure (as explained) and include the content (see here) in one single step. 
• For the case that a child element is not displayed at the level you intended, click on  to drag and drop the element to its correct place (horizontal and/or vertical).
• If a national target addresses multiple issues (alike most Aichi Targets), consider including the target and adding child target elements (i.e. target and sub-targets). This facilitates the tagging of the items in the dashboard and yields better results when searching the latter.
• Limit the number of hierarchical levels to the necessary minimum to facilitate the tagging of items in the dashboard.

Always save your changes prior to leaving the page!

32. What should I consider when inserting the content of your NBSAP into the working space? (name, description, image)

The information you include in the child elements is, as shown below, displayed in the "Strategies" section of the homepage (only people who are logged in into your national working space can see the information).

Tips:

• Name: Choose a short title (the wording of a goal/objective/target might be rather long)
• Description: The goal/objective/target might be pasted in the description. Avoid to include lengthy texts
• Image: An image (optional) will be displayed as shown below 

Always save your changes prior to leaving the page!

This information is displayed in the "Strategies" section of the homepage as follows:

33. What is the function of the "Prefix", the "Strategy item type" and the "ID"?

The "Prefix", the "Strategy item type" and the "ID", serve to create a unique identifier for a goal, an objective or a target which is used to filter the contents of your dashboard (see below) according to elements of your NBSAP (e.g. specific national targets).

• The Prefix identifies the Strategy (e.g. SBS for Swiss Biodiversity Strategy)
• The Strategy item type defines the hierarchical level of the element according to your NBSAP (i.e. Mission, goal, objective, target, indicator, etc.)
• The ID is the index of your element (e.g. target 2 of the SBS would have the ID 2)

34. How do I map my national goals/objectives/targets to global/regional targets?

To create a mapping between elements of your NBSAP and regional/global goals and targets, proceed as follows:

• Click the box "Mapped regional/global strategies"
• Select the regional/global strategy you want to map your goal/target to (e.g. CBD - Aichi Targets)
• Select the regional/global goal you want to map your goal/target to (e.g. Aichi Goal A)
• Select the regional/global target you want to map your goal/target to (e.g. Aichi Target 1)

Repeat the process for each mapping.

Always save your changes prior to leaving the page!

35. I only have the mapping between my NBSAP and the Aichi Targets. How can I relate the NBSAP to other global regional strategies?

DaRT includes mappings among global/regional strategies which are agreed by the Conventions (see: Strategies). After having mapped your national goals and targets to the Aichi Targets, these mappings can be used to define the relationship between your NBSAP and additional strategies.

Proceed as follows:

• Go to Strategies;
• Select your NBSAP (you have to be logged in to do so) and the goal/target from the menu on the left;
• The mapping between your goal/target and the Aichi Targets appears;
• Select an Aichi target to discover the mapping with other strategic plans;
• Check if this mapping is applicable to your national goals/targets and where appropriate, apply the mapping as described above.

Note: As DaRT includes only agreed mappings, you may wish to complete the mapping according to your needs.

36. Can I include more than one strategy into my working space?

Yes, you can include several strategies into your working space.