Configuring the Project

If you are the owner of a project, you can configure it using the web interface. When you are the owner (or an administrator), a new link in the left local navigation bar of the project will appear with the name Settings.

The Settings page will give you the following options:

1. Project details: here you will be able to change the name of the project, the description, icon, etc.
2. Task settings: this button will open the task-settings page where you will be able to configure the tasks’ scheduler, change the tasks’ priority, modify the tasks’ redundancy and delete the tasks and its associated task runs (also known as answers).
3. Project delete: if you click this button you will be able to remove the project from the system entirely. A big warning message will be shown before allowing you to delete the project.
4. Project blog: if you click this button, you will be able to write a new blog post to be shared with the volunteers.

Official support

If you need help configuring your PYBOSSA server, contact us. We offer official support, and we would love to work with your PYBOSSA server.

Edit the project details

In this section you can change the following parameters of your project:

• Name: the full name of your project, i.e., Flickr Person Finder
• Short name: (also known as slug) the string that will be used to access your project, http://server/project/short_name.
• Description: A short description of the project, e.g., Image pattern recognition. By default, it will have been autogenerated for you from the Long description you filled in the previous step (but without the Markdown!).
• Long Description: A long description where you can use Markdown to format the description of your project. This field is usually used to provide information about the project, the developer, the researcher group or institutions involved in the project, etc.
• Allow Anonymous Contributors: By default anonymous and authenticated users can participate in all the projects. However, you can change it only to allow authenticated volunteers to participate.
• Password: If you want to control who can contribute or access to your project, you can set a password here to share with those you allow to do it. If you leave it blank, then no password will protect your project!
• Category: Select a category that fits your project. categories are added and managed by the server administrators.
• Webhook: Write here the URL of the server that will handle the real-time data analysis of this project’s tasks.
• Also, you will be able to select and upload a image from your local computer to set it as the project image throughout the server.

Task Settings

The Task Settings is only accessible for the project owner and server administrators. The page can be reached via the Settings menu, but also from the Tasks link in the left local navigation bar.

The page shows four different blocks:

1. Task Scheduler: this block allows you to specify how the project should send tasks to the volunteers.
2. Task Priority: this block allows you to change the priority of the tasks.
3. Task Redundancy: use this block to change the default number of answers (30 by default) that you want to obtain before marking a task as completed.
4. Delete Tasks: this final block allows you to flush all the tasks and its associated task runs (answers).

Task Scheduler

PYBOSSA provides different task schedulers that will send tasks to the users in very different ways.

Default or Depth First

The Default task scheduler (also known as Depth First) has the following features:

1. It sends the tasks in the order that were created, first in first out.
2. Users (anonymous and authenticated) will only be allowed to participate once in the same task. Once a user has submitted a Task Run (or answer) for a given task, the scheduler will never send that task to the same user.
3. It will send the same task until the task-redundancy is achieved. In other words, if a task has a redundancy value of 3, the task will be always sent until those 3 answers have been submitted. Once the 3 answers have been collected, the task will be marked as completed and it will not be sent again.
4. When a user has submitted a Task Run for a given task, the scheduler will send to the same user the next task.
5. This scheduler allows the usage of orderby and desc arguments via the api/projectID/newtask endpoint.

In summary, from the point of view of a user (authenticated or anonymous) the system will be sending the project tasks in the order they were created. If the user tries to reload a task that he or she already participated, the system will detect it, and warn the user giving the option to try with another task (the scheduler will search for the proper task for the given user).

From the point of view of the project, the scheduler will be trying to complete (get all the answers requested by the task-redundancy value) all the tasks as soon as possible.

Depth First All

The Depth First All scheduler has the following features:

1. It sends the tasks in the order that were created, first in first out.
2. Users (anonymous and authenticated) will only be allowed to participate once in the same task. Once a user has submitted a Task Run (or answer) for a given task, the scheduler will never send that task to the same user.
3. It does not respect the task state. In other words, if a task has a redundancy value of 3, the task will be always sent even when those 3 answers have been submitted. Once the 3 answers have been collected, the task will be marked as completed and it will be sent again to new users.
4. When a user has submitted a Task Run for a given task, the scheduler will send to the same user the next task.
5. This scheduler allows the usage of orderby and desc arguments via the api/projectID/newtask endpoint.

In summary, from the point of view of a user (authenticated or anonymous) the system will be sending the project tasks in the order they were created. If the user tries to reload a task that he or she already participated, the system will detect it, and warn the user giving the option to try with another task (the scheduler will search for the proper task for the given user).

From the point of view of the project, the scheduler will be trying to complete (get all the answers requested by the task-redundancy value) all the tasks as soon as possible allowing new users to participated in completed tasks as well.

Breadth First

The Breadth First scheduler has the following features:

1. It sends the tasks in the order that were created, first in first out.
2. It sends always first the task with the least number of task runs in the system.

In summary, from the point of view of a user (authenticated or anonymous) the system will be sending the project’s tasks that have less answers (in case of not having an answer, the creation time will be used to send them like in a FIFO –first in first out).

From the point of view of the project, the scheduler will be trying to obtain as soon as possible an answer for all the available tasks.

Note

If you use the limit and offset, the tasks will be ordered first by the number of task runs, returning always first the tasks with less number of task runs for the user.

Lock

The Lock scheduler has the following features:

1. It sends the tasks in the order that were created, first in first out.

2. When a task has been sent, the task will be locked for the user (anonymous or registered) that requested it for 60 minutes.

3. If another user request a task, it will be sent a different task that has not being locked.

In summary, from the point of view of a user (authenticated or anonymous) the system will be sending the project’s tasks in order. She will not find any difference from other schedulers.

From the point of view of the project, the scheduler will be trying to send different tasks to users, spreading the users within all available tasks of the project.

Note

This scheduler does not allow you to request more than 2 tasks at a time to avoid people locking many tasks at once.

Note

This scheduler could be interesting when you hold a workshop and you want everyone participating in a different task at the same time.

Task Priority

PYBOSSA allows you to prioritize the tasks, or in other words, which tasks should be delivered first to the volunteers.

Warning

Task Priority is only respected by the default scheduler.

The page shows you two input boxes:

1. Task IDs: comma separated Task IDs of your project tasks. Note: not spaces between the values or commas.
2. Priority: the priority that you want to set for the Task IDs. This must be a value between 0.0 and 1.0.

A task with a priority 1.0 will be the first Task to be delivered to a given user. In case that two or more tasks have the same priority value, the first task that will be delivered will be the one with the lower Task.ID value.

Task Redundancy

The Task Redundancy is a feature that will allow you to analyze statistically, the results that your project are getting for each of its tasks.

PYBOSSA by default assigns a value of 30 task runs –answers– per task, as this value is commonly used for analyzing the population statistically.

This page will allow you to change the default value, 30, to whatever you like between a minimum of 1 or a maximum of 10000 answers per task. We recommend to have at use at least three answers per task. Otherwise, you will not be able to run a proper analysis on a given task if two users answer differently.

For example, imagine that the goal of the task is to answer if you see a human in a picture, and the available answers are Yes and No. If you set up the redundancy value to 2, and two different users answer respectively Yes, and No, you will not know the correct answer for the task. By increasing the redundancy value to 5 (or even bigger), you will be able to run a statistical analysis more accurately.

Delete Tasks

This section will allow you to complete remove all the Tasks and associated Task Runs (answers) of your project.

Note

This step cannot be undone, once you delete all the tasks and associated task runs they will be lost forever.

Warning

Only tasks not associated with a result can be deleted.

This feature is useful when you are testing your project, and you are deciding the structure that you are going to build in your answers.

Import tasks automatically

Both pro users and server administrators can have access to this feature, which allows to schedule a background job that will automatically import tasks every 24 hours. This option is accessible from the Tasks link in the left local navigation bar:

Tasks can be imported using any of the PYBOSSA built-in importers, such as csv-import and epicollect-import. To set up an autoimporter, please refer to the instructions for CSV importer, EpiCollect+ importer, as the procedure is the same.

The only difference is that the tasks won’t be imported only once, but regularly, as explained. However, the same behavior should be expected, so auto-importing a CSV file that does not change will result in no new tasks being imported.

Note

The Dropbox, Amazon S3 and Youtube importers are not available for being used as an auto importer.

Once an auto importer has been set up, it can also be canceled anytime. Just delete it. And a new one can then be created.

Delete the project

In case that you want to remove the project and all its tasks, results and task runs, use this section to delete the project.

Warning

This action cannot be undone. Be sure before proceeding.

Info

Only projects without results can be deleted.

Adding co-owners to your project

Job creators have the ability to add co-owners to jobs that they create. The co-owner will be able to view/edit the task presenter code on a job, as well as change the task settings and upload tasks. To do this, go to settings -> manage co-owners

Once there, you are able to type in the username of the person that you want to add as a co-owner, click on Search, and then click on “Add Co-Owner”.

The new co-owner will appear in the project co-owners list. Project co-owners (with the exception of the original project creator) can also be removed from here.

Transfer project ownership

You can transfer the project ownership to another user in the PYBOSSA server.

For changing the ownership, just add the email of the user that you want to make the new owner.

Note

If you are not an admin of PYBOSSA, you cannot undo this action, and you will not be able to modify/change settings of the project as you will not be the owner anymore. Admins, however, can change the ownership always.

Generate project report

You can generate project report in csv form that provides consolidated status of your project. This report has project and user statistics sections. Project section lists information on project id, project short name, total tasks in project, time when first and last task was submitted and average time spent on each task in minutes. User statistics section lists information on contributors id, name, full name, total tasks completed, percentage of tasks completed and time when first and last task submission were submitted by the contributor.

The report can be generated from “Export Project Report” option under project settings page.