Animal Codes

ASM allows you to choose the format that animal codes will be automatically generated in. ASM internally stores two codes for each animal, the ``normal'' code, unique among all animals and the ``short'' code. The short code does not have to be unique and is used by staff wanting to quickly identify animals in conversation.

The defaults are TYYYYNNN (the first letter of the animal type, followed by the year it was brought to the shelter, followed by a number unique within that year for that type of animal) for the normal code and NNT for the shortcode (a unique number within the year for the animal's type, followed by the type).

You can build and use any format string you like, using the following tokens:

Here are some examples: If you change the coding formats when you already have animals on file using a different format, those animals will be ignored when creating new codes and multiple codes can co-exist.

Any values you put in your codes other than these tokens (such as punctuation or other letters) will not be substituted and will be retained in generated codes. For example, the format NNN:21:T will produce 001:21:D for the first dog of the year.

If you do not want ASM to supply codes to your animals (you will have to manually enter them yourself), you need to set both coding formats (regular and short) to blank strings and untick all of the boxes under ``Coding System''. In addition, some further options can be set on this tab:

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