Responsible Party

 

How to assign, edit and search for Responsible Party in ZIMS.

 

Contact SPECIES360 Support

 

You can assign a Responsible Party to an Animal, Enclosure and Life Support record. How you choose to assign and use a Responsible Party is an institutional choice. You can select to assign a single Individual, Team or a Department. These assignments can be changed as needed. The Responsible Party is often assigned at the time of accessioning or creating a visit for an animal or recording a new Enclosure or Life Support. It is not a mandatory field and can be added later. You can search Animals and Enclosures by Responsible Party but not Life Supports. This functionality may affect how you make assignments depending on how you want to get the information back out.

 

The following are some ideas for assigning Responsible Party:

• Animals
  • Director or CEO (ultimately they are responsible!)
  • Area Curators
  • Teams caring for the animal
  • Lead Keeper of the area
• Enclosure
  • Curator overseeing the enclosure
  • Teams caring for animals in the enclosure
  • Maintenance Staff charged will upkeep of the enclosure
• Life Support
  • Aquarist in charge of connecting, disconnecting and maintenance

 

However you assign them, you should be consistent with your designations.

 

The Responsible Party grid is in the More Details tab of an Animal or Enclosure record and in the Basic Detail grid of a Life Support record. If you did not assign a Responsible Party when recording the Accession or Visit or creating the Enclosure or Life Support record, select Actions > Add New.

 

 

 

Should you want to add an additional Responsible Party select Actions > Add New again. This is how you can add multiple individuals as Responsible Parties. Assign Responsible Party is not available as a Batch Action.

 

Should an assignment no longer be considered Active, highlight the record and select Actions > View/Edit Selected. Uncheck the Active box.  This will keep the historical thread intact. Only delete an assignment if it was done by mistake. Only the Start Date is captured. The date it was made Inactive is not.

 

 

To find a list of records assigned to a person, Team or Department, use the Responsible Party search at the bottom of the Animal Advanced Search box or the Enclosure Search. As mentioned, there is no Responsible Party search for Life Supports. Only currently Active Responsible Parties will be found.

 

You can also assign a Responsible Party for Enclosure and Life Support Maintenance and Water Changes and Enclosure Treatment. This person does not have to be the person assigned as the Responsible Party for the entire record. It is who is responsible for the action performed.

 

The Enclosure Activity Report is the only Report that can be filtered by Responsible Party. This Report will filter by who was recorded as performing the specific action on an Enclosure or Life Support as noted above.

 

Revised 5 March 2025