This page provides a general help for the site. Some pages contain a help section that covers issues specific to them.
The site has been designed in a way to make things intuitive and easy to learn. While I tried to explain even the simplest things below, I imagine it's not necessary to read it right away. Try using the site first and come back here if you don't understand something.
The interface follows a few simple rules:
Navigation is split into 3 parts:
Index pages display a list of object instances. Results are paginated - split into pages containing up to 20 records.
Click on column header's title to set the sort order by that column (e.g. click on Investigator to sort results by investigator's name). Re-click a header for a descending order.
Links in actions column let you view, edit and delete a visit.
Index pages of visits and timesheets have some extra functionalities - filters and permalinks.
An example index page: visits.
In the following paragraphs, I'm referring to filters on visits page. Filters on timesheets page differ slightly.
Filters serve two purposes:
You may enter a date range (or just a bottom or top end of it). Example: I want to see only visits planned to happen before 2009-07-15 and executed between 2009-07-10 and 2009-07-20.
Also, you may wish to exclude all visits which have one of its dates empty or non-empty. Example: I want to see only those visits that haven't been executed yet (check exclude non-empty in the executed line).
You may also filter users by associated Users (if you have sufficient permissions), Partners, Projects and Investigators. Simply select one or more items in the select boxes to have all the others disappear from the result set.
Example usage: in the Investigators box select Dr House and Dr Lubicz. In the Projects box, select Aspirin. When you click on the submit button, only visits made to Dr House or Dr Lubicz in regards to Aspirin project will be shown.
Permalink is a way to restore a set of filters in the future or on another computer. When you click on the "permalink" link on the index page, you'll be shown an URL (web page address) that contains all filters that you have set at the moment. When you (or someone else) pastes that link in the future, he'll have the same filters set for himself.
A view page displays everything about some object's instance. An example view page: go to visits index and click on view link in any row of the table.
An add page lets you create a new instance of an object (visit, timesheet, etc.). Fill all the fields and hit on the submit button. If there are any errors, you'll be kicked back to the form and asked to correct any mistakes you've made. Otherwise, and object will be created and you'll see a notification. An example: add a new visit.
To make the selection of investigators and projects more convenient, we only display those investigators and project that have been associated with a monitor. To create these associations, go to user's profile and click on the associate link.
Lets you edit an instance of an object. Behaves similarly to the add page.
To make things easier to learn, the interface elements have been standardised.
They're there to notify you that an action you tried to make failed (red), succeeded (green), or partially succeeded (yellow, rather uncommon).
They provide a local help. Hover over them to see a message. 
They're used to enter a date. We're using a common way to display and enter dates across the whole site (YYYY-MM-DD). Click on a calendar if you don't feel like typing the date yourself.
Some things (such as a box which contains a permalink) aren't needed very often and would mainly provide interference if were visible at all times. Clicking on links that look like those below toggles the visibility of these elements.
