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Project Management - Introducing Protocol Season Start Dates

In agriculture, timing drives everything from seed selection and planting to harvest and performance review. Whether you're monitoring a cover crop trial or managing a network of plots across regions, understanding when a season truly starts is key to planning, consistency, and insight accuracy.

But here’s the catch: not every crop or protocol follows the same seasonal rhythm.

The Problem with a One-Size-Fits-All Start Date

Most platforms default to the planting date as the start of the season. While convenient, this can create misalignments for:

  • Crops that have growth cycles that being prior to spring (e.g., winter wheat, camelina, covercress).

  • Trials that need to track weather, GDD, or pre-season field activities.

  • Protocols that vary by region or product.

In short: relying only on planting dates limits visibility and planning precision.

The INVISION Solution – Season Start at the Protocol Level

INVISION introduces Season Start Settings right where they matter most — in Protocol configuration, the heart of project planning.

Here’s how it works:

🔐 Admin-Only Access

Only users with Admin privileges can configure season start settings at the protocol level. This ensures consistency across trials and prevents misconfigurations.

Crop-Specific Settings

Admins select the crop (e.g., CoverCress, Winter Wheat) when setting up the protocol. Each crop can have its own season logic.

Season Start Type – Two Flexible Options

A new dropdown lets you choose how a season begins:

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  1. Planting Date (Default)

    • Season starts on the actual planting date of each field.

  2. Custom Date

    • Admin can pick a fixed calendar date via date picker.

    • This becomes the start point for the entire season across all enrolled fields.

What Changes When You Set a Custom Date?

If a custom season start is selected, INVISION uses this date to:

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  • Anchor Season-at-a-Glance weather summaries.

  • Drive Growing Degree Days (GDD) calculations.

  • Set clearer expectations for growth stages, field visits, and data collection windows.

  • Align remote sensing overlays and alerts with the actual seasonal timeline.

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Why It Matters for Project Management

In large-scale field trials, small timing differences can cause major gaps in data consistency. INVISION’s protocol-level season start configuration solves that by giving project leads the ability to:

  • Standardize planning windows across trials.

  • Schedule field visits, sampling, and scouting more accurately.

  • Align analytics across geographies and crop types.

  • Avoid guesswork when interpreting weather or phenology charts.

Whether you're launching a national hybrid trial or managing 20 small plots, this feature helps turn season-based variability into structured, actionable timelines.

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