Entering Trunk System Data in the Wiki - Using Infoboxes

Infoboxes are used to document a specific trunk system; the name, system type, some technical information as well as providing a link to the RRDB, and where possible, the FCC data stored there.

The most commonly used infoboxes are documented and can be found here in the TRS-Related section. However some observations on using these infoboxes may prove useful;

1. Coding the infoboxes looks complex for the newcomer, but in fact, it is very much a fill-in-the-blanks operation. If you would like to see an example to use as a guide, simply use the what links here option in the toolbox while looking at the template in the Template guide referenced above. Edit the desired article to view the code. Copy the infobox call and substitute the values you need.
2. You don't necessarily need to code for every value the infobox needs; sometimes data is simply not available. Leaving it blank is fine.
3. As you get progressively larger in scope, the infobox to be used will use less and less user-defined data. The 'infobox TRS' has the largest amount of data, while the 'infobox trs multistate' uses the least. There are various templates that take over several of these functions as the scope increases.
4. If a particular infobox - particularly the geographic-related ones - seems more appropriate, feel free to use it.
5. The Canadian infobox has no links to the Industry Canada website as such access is not available from the RRDB
6. There is no FCC lookup data available for the Federal or Military infoboxes as such data is stored in the NTIA, which the public can't access
7. The FCC callsign (where you have it) and the sid number are required to access the correct data in the database, including all the FCC functions. The callsign(s) can be found in the FCC LISTINGS link that is right above the frequency box in the database. The sid (or System ID) is found in the very last token of the URL for the database entry.
8. When using the infobox TRS template, you may encounter a system that has multiple callsigns for multiple sites. The problem here is that the infobox coding, like the database itself, can only handle one query at a time. To get around this limitation, and there are only 2 or 3 callsigns to be documented, use the MoreCallsigns function along with the Callsign template. View the source of the San Antonio/Bexar County EDACS ProVoice article for a simple example. If there are more than this, create a separate section in the article which lists the other callsigns using the Callsign template. We will discuss the use of this and other useful templates in a following section.
9. The type of system being defined should always link to that term in our Glossary.
10. These articles should serve as a top level for the system. Feel free to add some brief technical information, system news and the like but any other data should be moved to their own article and linked in a Related Pages section. We have categories reserved for capturing various kinds of data, and these will be discussed later. This includes talkgroups under investigation, MOTOTRBO bandplans and Radio/User IDs.

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