Zones are a reporting tool that can be used to group locations together based on the specific requirements of an organization or project. Unlike location levels, zones are custom-based and serve to bring relevance to a particular context for an organization.
Main Features
Once a zone is setup, detailed information is available from the left hand record menu of the Zone information window.
General information: This page displays general information pertaining to the zone such as the the zone name in applicable languages, the zone parent, and the zone status.
Sub-zones and sub-locations: This menu can be expanded into the Sub-locations and Sub-zones sub menus. The Sub-zones information page identifies child zones of the currently selected zone and their status.
Zones can be:
- Active or inactive.
- Created through the Configuration menu by Superusers or Administrators.
- They can also be organized in a Parent/child relationship with another zone. As in any parent/child hierarchy: any zone may be a parent, but a parent zone cannot have its child zone as its own parent.
Related engagements
This section presents all engagement types (communications, grievances, issues, etc.), as well as engagement plans that are directly or indirectly linked to that zone. You may view this as a table or on a map.
Zones and location levels
Whether it is for connecting locations or other zones with each other, or for grouping various types of engagements or plans, zones and location levels work together in a complementary way. The goal is to retrieve information pertaining to a zone or level no matter how far a location is connected to them.
Here is an example to better illustrate how both zones and location levels can work together:
- The communication record # C-12345 is associated to the location San Francisco.
- San Francisco does not have any direct zone attached to it. It is a City (location level) and has the state of California as a parent location level linked to it.
- The state of California does not have any zone attached to it either, it is a State (location level) and has the United States as the parent location level linked to it.
- United States is a country (location level), does not have any other parent location level associated to it, but it is linked to the zone “International projects”.
- Consequently, our communication record # C-12345 will show up under the related engagements of the “International projects” zone.
Examples of Use Case
- A mining project may have defined four different zones: a mine site, a railroad, a transformation plant, and a port. The railroad may be linked to a whole region while the mine site is only linked to two cities.