Decisions are a key part of any decision support system. Although the primary decision made is to accept a submission or reject it for cause, it is based on many smaller decisions that are taken during the examination. Often, over one hundred steps in the workflow will have each been judged before the final determination. In PlanTest, each step may have an associated decision to be set by a reviewing cadastral officer.
Decisions can be made in three work areas:
The standard PlanTest decision choices are: Pass, Fail, Ignore, and None (No decision). These options can be customized for a specific site. Importantly, the decisions choices can select standard messages associated with steps. This means that site specific choices, messages and actions may be taken depending on what particular steps may have contributed to a rejection or warning.
PlanTest does not assume an analytic test result and a decision. An analytic test result can be pass, fail, not applicable, or unknown. These result classes may be different for your site, as they can be customized. After a cadastral officer reviews a failed analysis result's details, a decision may be made to accept the results if they believe the fault is unimportant, justified, or a known special case. Likewise, a test that passes analysis may be rejected, due to a particular circumstance. The Summary Report shows statistics for steps with disagreement between the test result and decision. The report can be used to ensure that errors have not been made.
However, it is possible that site customization of some analytic tests may be written to automatically set the decision for a step based on the test result. For instance, one class set of analytic tests are fully vetted, and therefor allowed to set decisions automatically, while other analytic tests are required to have decisions made by examiners.
The current status of decisions on the examination are always readily visible in PlanTest in one of two windows: the Workflow window, or the Results & Decisions window. The Workflow window shows the decision status by checkboxes and color coding the nodes and leaves of the workflow tree. read more...
The Results & Decisions window represents workflow steps as table records - rows are color coded by the decision states. The R&D window shows more information than the Workflow control. Columns show examiner comments, analytic messages, as well as the analysis result and decision.read more...
There are also special reports under the Review Menu: the Examination Review Report which shows a complete table of the status of all steps for an ongoing examination, and the Summary Report which shows high level examination statistics.
Decisions may be set for each step using one of several methods depending on the type of step. Steps may be bound to an automated test. If so, then the decision is set in the Test Results Toolbar, or by groups in the Results and Decisions Toolbar. This process is described in detail in the preceding links. PlanTest allows for any mix of user or automated decisions. If a step is not bound to a programmed analysis, the decision is set using the Workflow Control. read more....
Typically, test results and decisions throughout the examination are incrementally saved to either a file in a shared folder or records in shared database. The location of the shared folder or the database is set in the site configuration file.
Decisions and test results are stored in the examination file or records any time a decision is taken on a step. This is a safeguard against losing work because of system failures or simply forgetting to save. There is a Save button on the main menu, but it should never really be necessary. On completion of an examination, the entire detailed results of analytic tests, the decisions, comments and related information are all recorded in the examination records. The records are then available as substantiating documentation for the decision taken, or as a reusable record for other purposes.