In this episode, we're going to dig into how to customize and share data from John Deere Operations Center or any farm management information system
You can find past podcast episodes and view show notes by visiting our Podcast website.
Related: Episode 168: John Deere Operations Center, and Episode 173: Fieldview And Slingshot Connections.
Have precision ag questions? We have the answers. Find a specific channel dedicated to answering your precision technology questions: Precision Ag Answers.
Read the entire transcript from the latest episode,
With that, let's dive into the show. Like I said, we're going to talk a little bit about sharing operations center data. Now, this is a common question that we get this time of year, and it comes in many different situations and scenarios. Just to throw a scenario out there, it's customers asking how they can share data layers or share their operational data with, maybe it's a business partner, maybe it's a landlord, maybe it's your agronomist, maybe it's a guy that you custom harvested for, but they want to see that data.
Now, of course, we know we would love it if everybody were utilizing the John Deere Operations Center as their FMIS or Farm Information Management System. We know the reality is that that's not true. Not everybody is utilizing the Operation Center. There's other farm management information softwares out there.
They all have their special tools and their benefits to utilizing them. We often get the question how, if I am in the Operations Center, how can I take my data and share it with my agronomist who maybe is using SMS AG Leader, or maybe it's a Trimble Ag software or Field View. or, there's a number of them out there. There's a couple different ways we can do this. It's actually, one of them would be of course the connection or the partnership within the Operation Center. Maybe the guy that you custom harvested the crop for, maybe he too is in the John Deere Operation Center. We'll briefly walk through that connection, but then we'll also talk through the ability to share data, third party or outside of the Operations Center.
In the case of Ag Leader SMS or Trimble Ag Software or one of those FMIS platforms. I just ,to start out just talking Operation Center to Operation Center. I know we've covered this before in different podcasts and YouTube videos and the information is out there. We have the ability within the John Deere Operations Center, we have the ability to partner with farms. Or you as the grower, have the ability to partner with third party trusted advisors. Whether it be your John Deere dealership, it's maybe your agronomist, maybe your accountant. Maybe again, like I said, a guy that you custom harvest for or you custom farm for. All of those people, they have the ability to go out and create their own Operation Center account. What that does is then gives them their own login credentials.
It's their own username, their own password. Then what we can do is under Team, so within your Operations Center, you go to the setup tab, and down on the bottom you'll see the Team button or the Team icon. What we can do is we can partner your two organizations together. Say it's your organization and the guy that you custom farm for, whether it's seeding, application, harvest, whatever. We can set up that partnership and give him, or give that other operation access to the data that only pertains to their fields, the ones that you are custom farming.
That gives a very quick, seamless connection for others to see the data. Now, the same goes for, maybe it's your agronomist. If your agronomist were out there utilizing the John Deere Operation Center, they have a John Deere Operation Center account. They too can get access and this is all to your discretion. The level of access that anybody gets is up to the account owner. Whoever that may be. Speaking to your farm, you as the account owner, you have the authority to control what level of access each one of your partners has.
Maybe you work with an agronomist, but he, because of the geographical area that you farm, maybe he only consults on half of your acres. You can give him access to only seeing half of those acres. It is very, very user-friendly on how to set that up, create those partnerships, and get that seamless access by having those partners. Now, again, that is if that, whether it's the guy you're custom farming for, a landlord, your agronomist, whoever this may be, that's the Operation Center to Operation Center solution. Now, again, we fully understand that not everybody is utilizing the Operations Center to house their data or analyze and manipulate their data.
There's other ways we have to bring that data in and out. Now, the other way, and I've already talked about this on a previous episode, and I have to go back and look to like five or six episodes ago, I talked about Field View and Raven Slingshot connections. Back on Episode 173, we talked about these connections between Raven Slingshot and Climate Field View. That would be the other way to be sharing data.
Maybe you work with somebody, it's a, again custom operation or your agronomist or something like that, and they utilize maybe Field View or something. Or maybe you utilize Field View and you want that connection to be made. We can create these background, or these third-party connections with other software that will flow the data automatically. If it's coming into the Operations Center, it will automatically flow into Field View.
If you want to learn more about that, go back to Episode 173. Give that a listen. We talk a little bit more about making those connections and the capabilities of it. Those are the integrated connections, I would say, to sharing that data. One of them I highly encourage anybody out there that's utilizing the Operations Center or you have maybe an agronomist or something like that, get them into the Operation Center. Making that partner connection is the easiest, most simple way to share data. They have their own username, their own password. They log in to their account and they can then see whatever data or information you share with them.
That is by far the cleanest, most simple connection when it comes to sharing data. Now, again, we understand that not everybody is doing that or utilizing the Operations Center. With that situation, we now have a very simple way to share specific data layers with a third party. Essentially what we're doing is we are just exporting this data in the form of a shape file, and then you're able to import it into whatever system, whatever FMIS or whatever you're trying to do. You have the ability to do it.
Now, this process is very simple. You actually get to pick which data layer you want to share. Maybe you only want to share your planting data, or you only want to share your harvest data, or whatever that may look like. You can pick and choose which data layers you are sharing. The process to do that, again, like I said, is very simple. All we do is we go into the Analyze tab. Within your Operations Center, you click on Analyze. From there, we are going to click on Field Analyzer. Now, yes, there are other ways to access Field Analyzer from the Home map and things like that, but the big thing is we just need to be in Field Analyzer.
Once we are in Field Analyzer, you pick which field and data layer you want to share with that third party or via a shape file, whether it's again, your harvest, your application, your seeding, whatever it may be, you choose that data layer.
From there, we then go up to the top right of the screen and you'll see Share/Export. We'll click on that and you actually get a few different options. One of the options is create a report that's just your typical. We're going to print out that PDF or we're going to generate that PDF report. We download that report and we can print it, we can email it, we can do whatever we want.
The other one is share work data. I was talking about those partnerships, so if you have an agronomist, or maybe you have, you're doing that custom harvesting for your neighbor or a friend of yours, you create that partnership, you go to Share Work Data, and you would then be able to select that partner under the dropdown menu. There'd be a dropdown menu that asks you to select your partner. Now, if you are not partnered with any organizations that are capable of receiving this data there won't be any partners in that list.
From there, you would just hit Share Work Data, and that partner that you are sharing that data with would then see it in their Operation Center. The last one you'll see up on the top is Export Work Data. With that, you have the ability to export in shape file format. Now, there's two different ways you can do this. I'm going to jump over the first one. We go back to the partner. Again, if you are partnered with a different Operation Center organization, so again, the neighbor that you're custom harvesting for, an agronomist, whoever that may be, you can share or you can export to your partner's file, and they will then get that raw file in shape file format in their files.
Now, rewinding back, the other way to do that is to export to my organization's files. Again, say you're working with an agronomist that maybe uses SMS or Trimble Ag software, one of the other ones out there, you can click export to my organization files, give it whatever name you want to name it, and then hit export work data. From there, it will go into your files page. You click on more, you click on files, and you will then see that generic shape file sitting or it's a shape file in a zip file format sitting in your files.
You would then have the ability to checkmark that or select it and download it to your desktop, once it's downloaded to your desktop. All you're dealing with at that point is a very basic shape file that can essentially be a generic, I shouldn't say basic, I should say generic shape file that can then be uploaded onto all these other different platforms that are being utilized within the ag industry. Those are all the different ways we have to be able to share data. Again, this is a common question we get this time of year. A lot of it comes from custom harvesting, custom applicating throughout the summer.
Maybe you're doing custom fertilizer work, lot of the custom questions, but then also when you're working with your agronomists, the agronomists that are not utilizing the John Deere Operations Center they're working off of their own information system or FMIS. These are the different ways that you can connect with all of those partners. We've come a long way from having to be on-site to see the data. As crazy as it sounds, we've moved on from passing flash drives, thumb drives, USB sticks, whatever you want to call them. We've moved on from even that. There's no reason to be passing those flash drives back and forth or mailing them or waiting until the agronomist comes by the next time or whatever it may be.
There's some very easy connections, very easy file downloads. You can email these, whatever, I guess some of these zip files, if you still wanted to pass that flash drive, you can, but there's a lot of easy ways to share this data to get the results you're looking for. No matter what your operation looks like, whether you're doing some custom work, you're wanting to share data with your agronomist, maybe it's a landlord, whatever that may be. The John Deere Operation Center has those abilities to create those file formats, share them, whether it's with that partner connection or just exporting that generic shape file. Hopefully this episode was useful for you.
If you are out there, you're looking for ways to share this information or you've been looking for an easier way to share some of your agronomic data, hopefully this answered some of the questions for you. With that, we'll catch you on the next one.
--
Please take a moment to subscribe to this podcast if you haven't already, you can subscribe to the show on the many different podcasting apps that we're streaming this out to, such as Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, as well as many others. While you're out there, drop us a review. We'd love to hear what you think about the show.
Lastly, make sure to follow RDO Equipment Company on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and catch all of our latest videos on Youtube. You can also follow me on Twitter @RDOTonyK.
--
Discover more how-to information and success stories about precision agriculture,
