OverseerFM enables one account to be set up per farm or farm system. Multiple parties may gain access to the farm account via permissions controlled by the farm account owner (ideally the farmer or farm manager) or by the farm account administrator/s (often the organisation that set up the account).
This allows farmers and farm managers visibility and control over what happens to their farm information and aims to reduce the duplication of effort and cost within the industry when many professionals model the same farm for different purposes.
Permissions
A farm account represents a single notional farming operation to be modelled. This might be a single farm business, or it might be one operation within a corporate or cooperative farm business.
Access to the farm account is through permissions that are assigned to organisations. Organisations may have one or more users and so the permissions held by the organisation are granted to all users within that organisation.
When a farm account is created, the farm owner must be identified. If the owner is not the person setting up the account an email is sent to the nominated person to accept ownership. Accepting ownership means that person (and all users of their organisation) is accepting the role of managing access to their farm account.
The following is a list of permissions that can be granted within a farm account:
- Owner represents the farm, e.g. farmer, farm manager or administrator. The owner can grant and revoke permission to access the farm account to other owners, organisations or consultancies that they work with.
- Administrators who can grant and remove permissions and add other administrators. The person who sets up the farm account is automatically an administrator unless the farm account owner chooses to remove that administration access. Farm account administrators cannot remove access from farm account owners or invite other owners if there is already an owner of the farm account
- Write access provides the organisation with access to all year end analyses and any other analyses that have been shared at the ‘farm access’ level.
- Publication access is when an analysis has been published to an organisation. This allows that organisation access to their publications only. They can create their own working copies of that publication to do their own analysis.
- Guest access allows any organisation to create their own analyses within a farm. These analyses are private to the organisation only and they do not have access to any other analyses within a farm. A request is made to obtain write access to the farm owner before an organisation can get guest access. If they are subsequently granted write access their analyses become available to the farm.
A note: we encourage farmer engagement in their OverseerFM analyses. The more farmers are engaged with the information, the greater value it can have as an input into their farm business decisions. However, if the farmer does not wish to accept farm account ownership, the administrator is able to manage account permissions on their behalf.
How it works:
- A consultant is hired by a farmer to provide some advice that requires Overseer analyses. The farmer does not have an account in OverseerFM. The consultant registers with OverseerFM and creates a farm account (by clicking on create new farm in the dashboard).
- When setting up the farm account the consultant identifies the farmer as the farm account owner, and the farmer is emailed and invited to accept this role. Once confirmed, the farm account owner has full control over the farm account. They can add or remove permission for users and administrators, and they will be responsible for accepting or declining email requests from other users wishing to access their farm account.
- The consultant who set up the farm account will have administration access to the account. Administrators can add users, including new administrators, or remove permissions that they have added.
- The consultant publishes an analysis to the council, which makes a read only copy of the analysis available to the council.
- The farmer’s dairy company wants to create an analysis for the farm for reporting. It requests access to the farm, which provides them with guest access so they can create the analysis and do their reporting. The farm owner receives the request and can accept the request which will give them access to the analysis or decline the request which will leave them with guest access.
Farm account ownership
To enable sharing of farm data and access, someone needs to take control of the farm account and manage who can access the information. This is the farm account owner and should be the farmer or a representative from the farm. Farms that take up this opportunity can get greater visibility of their information and the work that is done on their behalf. It provides a way to better understand what OverseerFM is reporting and engage with advisors on how to make any changes or improvements to their farming operation.
Managing farm account access
Farm account owners and administrators control the organisations that have access to the farm account. Access is granted at the organisation level, which means that once a user is granted access, all users within that person’s organisation will have access to the farm account too.
Account owners and administrators can manage access to the farm by selecting “Manage farm access” from the farm home screen (top right). This will show a list of users who have permission to access the farm account.
The farm account owner can revoke any access to the farm account, while administrators can only revoke access to organisations that they granted it to.
Sharing farm accounts
OverseerFM creates a shared workspace where every user with permissions to access the farm account can copy and change Year-end analyses. This enables information about how the farm is set up and run to be shared between those users who are undertaking analysis for the farmer or farm manager.
The benefit of this is that it avoids duplication of effort and enables greater consistency in how the farm is analysed over time. Farm account owners can see who has access and what activity is being undertaken on their behalf.
Farmers should only need to pay once for farm analysis and make use of each analysis for multiple purposes such as compliance, industry reporting, planning and decision support.
Please take care when working on analyses and be considerate of the impact it may have on others. All changes that impact analysis results are written to an audit log with some information about what changed. A “Comment” section is also provided for each analysis. This should be used to record any information about the analysis which you think might be useful for other users who have access to the farm account to have access to, for example – if you implemented a set of mitigations on a farm block between Year End Analyses:
When initially created predictive and scenario analyses are only visible to other users within your organisation. Users can choose to share them with the farm account owners only or make them available to anyone that has farm access.