User Guide

How To Enter, View, and Visualize Real Food at Carleton

To Acccess Website

Go to /rfc_login. You have to know the login credentials and sign in via the login page. If you try to access any other part of our website, you will be redirected to the login page anyways. If the credentials are wrong, the page will refresh. If the credentials are correct, you will be redirected to the home page.

To Enter Data

Navigate to the Entry Session page. This will show all of the data entered so far in the current session.
Click “Add New Entry” will take you to the Data Entry page where individual items can be added to the current session.
After filling out all the necessary input fields (Category, Vendor, Cost (must be > 0), and Description) and selecting real food statuses select “Submit to Entry Session”. Note that this will add it to the current session but will not submit it to the database. To save time, fill in some of the entry fields and click “search for similar items.” The table below will display items that match the inputted fields that are currently in the database. Click “add” to auto-populate the entry fields with an item or click on individual cells to auto-populate just one cell.
When entering multiple items, selecting the checkboxes next to the category will save the information from item to item. For example, if entering items from a single receipt you can check the box next to vendor to avoid re-entering this from item to item.
After submitting as many items as you like, click “Return to Entry Session” to see all the data you have entered and the sum of their costs. Here you can edit or delete items before merging them into the database.
Items will be saved to this page, even if the tab or window is closed, until they have been submitted or the session has been canceled. When all items are satisfactory, verify the month, date, and rating version are correct and select “Submit All” to enter these into the database.
Once the items have been submitted they will now be viewable in View/Download data and as search results in Data Entry. If you change your mind and wish to not submit, select “Cancel Session”, which will erase the saved data from your browser.

To Search Database for Past Entries When Entering Data

In the Data Entry page, filling out any of the forms with data and selecting “Search for similar items” will bring up all past results that match all fields that have information in them.
Any of the categories can be used to search except for cost, and multiple categories can be used to search at the same time.
The results will show in the table at the bottom of the screen. In these results, you can click on an individual attribute of the data to populate the form, or select “ADD” to fill the form with all of the information of this item. Cost of past entries will not be autofilled.

To View or Download Entered Data

To view past data and download, enter whatever information you are searching for (for example, month and year (in numerical format)) and select “Go” to show results.
To download this data, select “Download as CSV”. A file in comma-separated-values format will downloaded to your computer downloads.
To open the downloaded file in Google Sheets: Select “Upload File” on Google Drive and select the file on your computer, which should be saved as “RFC” under downloads. Once it is on Google Drive, you can select “Open With” to convert it to Google Sheets.
To edit past data, select the edit button for the row in question. Change the information necessary and press save. Pressing the save buttons transfers the data into the database.

Visualization

Note: if the charts look unbearably large (i.e., they do not fit into a full-sized window), please refresh.

Show the real vs. nonreal dollar purchase of the 3 most recent years (of all available data in the database) by category (see pie chart) and by all data (see bar chart). Pie chart also shows the sum of all 3 years per category.

Display the top 5 items/categories/vendors/labels for a given year, both in terms of real and nonreal dollar purchase (e.x., which vendor did we buy the most amount of nonreal food from in 2017?). User has the option to look at previous years’ data too if needed.

Shows the real vs. nonreal data on a per-item basis for a given year.
Items can be added by searching and submitting individual items, as well as by choosing a single category (or all of them, EVEN!). Single items can be removed by buttons, and every item under the same category will be added/removed at the same time (duplicate items between individually added items and category items will only have 1 occurrence removed). The whole chart and all data in the table will be cleared upon clicking on the `clear canvas` button.
Only one category can be shown in a plot at once. Up to 3 items from a category is shown in the plot when category is first added, but user can add/remove items from that category onto the chart with the `show` options.
All data is shown in the data tables on the side, and the table also provides ranking options by individual columns. The table can also be downloaded in various formats.
All items on the chart are ranked by one of the 4 options (total $ purchase in given year, real $ purchase, nonreal $ purchase, or gap dollar amount = nonreal - real $ amount).
Changing year will preserve the selected items and category and re-draw their dollar data associated with the newly selected year on the canvas.

Shows the percent increase (both in terms of that item and all data) and dollar amount needed to switch a food item to be 100% real in a given year.
Ranking is computed as the normalized difference between % increase in total dollar amount minus % increase in single item in a descending order.
All buttons work exactly like the percentage chart, except the option to change ranking.

Shows the total vs. real dollar purchase of an item over the 3 most recent years. All buttons work exactly like the above 2 charts, except the option to adjust the year.

Shows the distribution of 2 variables (of all vendors and labels, for example) provided the other variable of the 3 (in this case, item). Specifically, if you submit `apples` in the items blank, the chart generates the distribution of real vs. nonreal purchase for every vendor in the past 3 years and for 3 years combined. Same distributions are drawn for associated labels as well.
Data tables are provided, and user has the option to control how many entries to show (useful in the case of large vendors, such as Sysco).

Troubleshooting

If you are experiencing issues, try using the website in another browser (Chrome is best).
If the website is performing slowly, working at another time should resolve the issue.
If entries do not submit correctly or do not show up when searched for, the items are not in the database and must be re-entered.
We recommend downloading versions of your data as a precautionary measure on a regular basis.

If further assistance is needed:

Contact the person maintaining the website (TBD) or Amy Csizmar-Dalal (adalal@carleton.edu)