Add 15 additional text fields to Material Sample table

[grantfitzsimmons]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Currently, the Material Sample table only has two available free text fields (text1, text2). For RBGE's new DNA sample collection, they need to record a variety of information that does not fit within the existing fields, forcing them to use the remarks field in a semi-structured format. This makes data entry and retrieval less efficient and more error-prone.

We should add 15 additional free text fields (text3, text4, text5, text6, text7, text8, text9, text10, etc.) with the type text to allow for large blobs of text. Agent fields would be appreciated as well.

From Robyn at RBGE on BoldDesk:

I’m currently looking at mapping a new collection for import into our instance of Specify. The new collection will be for our DNA samples, so I will be making use of the Material Sample table.

There are only 2 available text fields at present and I wanted to ask whether it would be possible to get the number of text fields increased – at the moment we are potentially going to need to put information in a semi-structured format into Remarks to be able to record all the information we need.

Describe the solution you'd like
We just need to add 15 additional text fields to the Material Sample table. This will allow them to properly record all necessary information for DNA samples without overloading the remarks field.

Describe alternatives you've considered
We have considered continuing to use the Remarks field for semi-structured data, but this is not sustainable for long-term data management and complicates downstream usage and analysis.

Reported By
Robyn at RBGE on BoldDesk