I’m working with Sharkbook and was doing a regional check of our encounters to see if there were any match with other spots (our sharks seen anywhere else). After checking and finding a highly potential match, an individual merge was apparently launched between the two sharks… However, we wanted to do a more thorough analysis before doing it, and I don’t know what happened (I misclicked maybe?) … Now the merge will be effective in a week, is there a way to cancel the merge while we do our check ?
Hi,
Thanks for your answer. For now it doesn’t say anything in the Identity section other than the actual shark ID, no mention of the other shark it will be merged with. The only thing I have is a notification saying " Merge of MD-005 into MZ-582 has been initiated. Auto completion date: 2023/11/05 , 2 week delayed execution." What does it mean ? Should I wait for the completion before removing it ?
Can you share the URL to the Encounter where you’re seeing this message? It doesn’t sound like something I’ve come across, so I’d need to look into it further.
Yes, the message doesn’t appear on the encounter but in our “notification” panel on our account… here is the encounter link where I clicked “inspect” on the match result before this notification appeared: Sharkbook: Wildbook for Sharks
If it doesn’t work, here is the ID number of the encounter: 8a0b4d2b-fbd9-4a2c-9c65-3122a344ceab
The merge has been canceled; thank for your patience! The request to merge had actually gone to our executive director, who owned one of the encounters for the shark you tried to merge with. I asked him to deny the request.
What happens in Wildbooks is that when you create a merge from the match results page with an individual you don’t own any previous encounters for, it sends a notification to users who do own encounters for the target animal and asks them to accept or deny the merge request. If they don’t respond within a certain amount of time, the merge is accepted.
I’m going to add this information to our help docs because other users are likely to run into this again at some point. Thanks for raising the issue!
I have some follow up questions about this, if that’s okay - I wasn’t aware of this merge use case and it could be VERY useful to our user community in multiple Wildbooks so I’m very curious to understand it fully.
Does the email merge request get to the receiving user even if they have unchecked the box in their
account profile that says “Receive automated notifications?”:
If a merge request like this gets accepted, assuming there is no collaboration btw the 2 users who are
owners of the 2 ID’d individuals:
Which ID gets merged into which ID?
Post merge, do the owners of each source ID (and related encounters) now both have access to the
merged Marked Individual page?
Assuming the answer to the previous question is yes, am I correct to assume, even though the 2
users may now both have access to the same, merged Marked Individual page, that each user can
only access their own encounters from within that Marked Individual page?
→ If that’s true, then what does each user see on the map for that merged Individual? Pins for
all GPS locations for all encounters from both users? Or only their own encounters’ GPS
pins?
→ If it’s all pins for all encounters, not restricted by user, are they then able to click on a pin of
an encounter belonging to the other user and see the date of that encounter record, as you
can when you click on GPS pins of your own encounters?
I really appreciate your help in understanding exactly how all of these scenarios work in this use case so that our users, who may want to make use of this merging capability, can make an informed decision.
This only applies to the new encounters of Marked Individual emails and other “info” type emails that don’t require action from the user. Stuff like merges and collaborations should still reach the user.
The encounter for Animal A (the one you’re currently reviewing matches for) would be merged into Animal B (the match candidate).
Yes. Anyone can view Marked Individual pages.
Correct. They’ll still see a collaboration popup if they click on an encounter that isn’t theirs.
Only the pins for their own encounters. This doesn’t override any current security settings regarding collaborations or encounter access. A user would still need a collaboration to view data that isn’t theirs and not owned by a public user.
