Entity Chooser

The entity chooser is a group of fields that work together and are very similar when used in different windows. Their purpose it to select an entity or group of animals for Fusion to work with. This always means that you will tell Fusion the pen the animals are in and a count. You may also need to identify the lot and you can link individual animals to the entity if you know who they are. The following shows an example of the entity chooser fields as they appear in the Move Animals window. Note that the fields may look slightly different on a touch screen vs a normal screen.

When you first enter (or tap) an entity chooser field, you will see a window similar to the following:

You first tell Fusion the location the animals are in. Usually Fusion will have defaulted to the correct location to start with. You will then need to specify the pen the animals are in. After you have selected the pen (and tabbed out if not on a touch screen) Fusion will decide if it also needs to know the lot. If it does, the Lot field will appear and you will need to enter the lot. Again, after you have tabbed out of the Lot field Fusion will determine if a sublot is necessary. If so, the Sublot field will be displayed. Once all the necessary fields to describe the entity are filled it, click the OK button. (If not on a touchscreen you can tab to the OK button and press the Spacebar key.

Once the entity is chosen, you need to specify the count involved. You can enter this directly or click the All Animals button to have Fusion figure out how many animals are in the entity. If you try to enter more animals than Fusion thinks are in the entity, it will change the count to the number of animals in the entity.

You can optionally link individual animals to an entity. Entities by themselves only refer to counts of animals. For example, during a pen move you can specify that 10 animals from a certain pen and lot are being moved. During the move, Fusion simply adjusts the headcount in each pen/lot combination affected without any knowledge of which individual animals were affected. When this happens, the pen an individual animal thinks it is associated with (in the Animal List window will not update and be incorrect. If you link individual animals to an entity, then Fusion can update the information for the animals themselves. (See the Animals and Linking section of the Core Concepts topic for more information.)

To link animals, click the Linked Animals button. You will be given several options to choose from. Some of the options are only available in certain situations.

• View "Existing" Linked Animals. Opens a window to show a list of animals that have been linked to the entity so far. It has buttons that allow you to link or unlink selected animals as you build the linked animals list. See View Existing Links for column information.
• View "New" Linked Animals. Opens a window to show a list of RFID tags that have been linked to the entity so far. It has buttons that allow you to link or unlink each tag. New animals with these RFID tags will be created when the event is saved.
• Try Auto Linking. In some cases Fusion can guess at the linked animals. This only works if you are always linking animals if you have selected all the animals in an entity. When you choose this option Fusion will check to see if the number of individual animals that think they are in the entity matches the count in the entity. If they match, the animals will automatically be linked.

• Link By Query. Opens a window with a list of animals. You can select animals and link them (or unlink them) with this window. You can use the normal list window functionality to search for animals, but there are special filter options under the Additional Filter field. Use these (which are described next) to quickly narrow the group of animals that are listed.

  • No Additional Filter. This option doesn't do any extra filtering. Set it to this if you want to use the normal list window functionality by itself to find animals.
  • Default Animals. Lists just then animals that Fusion thinks are in the entity you have chosen. If you are always linking animals, this list should be correct. If you don't always list animals, this list will probably not be useful.
  • Default Animals (Not Already Linked). This list is the same as the Default Animals list, but it filters it further so only animals not linked yet are shown. This is useful if you are coming back into this list to continue to select and link animals. This is the default option when the window opens.
  • Currently Linked Animals. Only shows animals already linked to this entity. This option is useful if you linked the wrong animals and want to find them and unlink them.

  After you have selected the animals you want to link, you must tap the Link Selected button to actually link them.

• Link By Reading RFIDs. This option expects an RFID reader to be connected and setup. It will begin reading tags and linking them as it recognizes tags. This may not terribly useful with current tag technology, but when UHF tags are more prevalent it could be used to quickly capture an entire truck load for an in or out cohort.
• Link By Job Batch. This option first shows a list of job batches. Select one and then a list of animals that were in that job batch will be shown. You can then select animals from that list and link them.
• Link By File Import. This option can be used to import RFID tags from a CSV or tab delimited file. You will be asked to select the file to import from. Then you'll be shown all the columns in the file and asked to click on the column that has the RFID tags in it. You can also deselect any rows that shouldn't be imported using the checkboxes in the first column. After this is done you'll be shown the list of RFID tags and Fusion will let you know which ones already exist and which ones don't, giving you options to deal with each one depending on the situation. If the situation allows for new animals to be created (ex. In Cohorts), new animals will be created and assigned the in cohort's pen and lot.

You can link a few animals and then link a few more. In fact, you can link a few animals using each method if it made sense. Fusion will keep track of which animals you link or unlink as you work with the entity. Once you save the main window, the linked animals will be committed to the entity.