How do the pest observations work?

Pest observations are distinct from identifications. Here's a break-down of how it works!

When it's time to check your pest monitors it's a two-step process.

1. "Create an Observation." You can do this on the Observations tab within IPM on the web application or you can do this directly from your phone in our mobile app. 

2. Once the Observation is created you can then assign "identifications" specifically to that observation.

Let's look a little closer at the pest "observations" feature

As mentioned above, you create an observation every time you "observe" your pest monitor or "observe" an insect in a space. This is the step that allows you to:

• specify the pest monitor you're looking at or the generalized space you observed an errant insect (make sure to select the proper "Scope" in the observation)
• upload pictures (of your pest monitor or the errant pest you saw)
• indicate the date you did this
• jot down any notes for yourself for later (it could be an ID for a super small insect you won't see in a photo, or specifics on where you saw the insect).

You can create an observation directly in our web application from the IPM Observe tab:

And you can also create observations while you are on the go by selecting "Record Pests" within our mobile application:

 

Using the mobile app could be super useful if you're fine with doing your ID mostly from photographs. It allows you to check your pest monitors in-situ and never have to bring them all back to your space. 

 

The mobile app can also be useful if you encourage your staff to record pest observations if they see an errant pest in a certain space. This will help avoid the appreciated but annoying tendency for staff to deliver said pests to your desk for identification 😅

 

Moving on to identification!

Once your observations are loaded you can start the fun part of assigning pest identifications to the them! At this time, this is only possible through our web application. You can do this two ways:

1. By clicking the "Analyze" tab in the IPM module
2. By clicking the text under the "Identifications" column in the IPM "Observe" tab.

The "Analyze" tab is designed to be a workflow to help you get through all of you observations that have no identifications attached. You can always go back and edit the identifications on an observation by choosing option 2 described above and in this screen shot below:

 

NOTE: Pest observations are distinct from general observations. If you are creating an observation specifically related to IPM be sure to do it within the IPM module.