Start the new year by analyzing your data

Now that harvest is over and your data has been imported into SMS, it’s time to organize and fix any mistakes that were found so it can be analyzed before next season. When using precision ag displays, it’s common that the operator will forget to change a field name, perhaps spell something wrong, or even select the wrong crop that they are harvesting. It’s important to correct any mistakes that happened in the field so the data is usable and presentable, which allows us to extract as much value from it as possible.

Luckily, SMS Basic and SMS Advanced have tools built in that will allow for easy clean up. With the help of field boundaries, the software will analyze the coordinates of the yield data and match them up to the boundaries set for each field.

The following tutorials have been created to help organize all the information collected during harvest.

First and foremost, having accurate field boundaries can help speed up the process and make data management easier. Here is a tutorial on creating a field boundary:

Once boundaries are established, SMS can use them as the means of organizing data and sorting it to the proper location. Watch the following tutorial to learn how to sort loads into fields:

If an operator went from field to field without changing anything on the display, then a more in-depth tool will need to be used. Split load/region requires field boundaries but can help separate loads that span across multiple fields. Check out the tutorial below as it helps explain the process:

Perhaps a duplicate field name showed up in the management tree upon importing the grain harvest information. A simple and easy-to-use merge tool can be found in SMS, which is outlined in the following tutorial:

Once all harvest data has been cleaned up and put in the proper field, it’s recommended to clear out old and unused field names from the Management Item Editor, found within the Tools menu. This step will prevent those misspelled, duplicated, or incorrect field names to be exported back out the following year.

We encourage you to start analyzing your data and turning it into a valuable resource as we think ahead to 2015!