Announcing the release of Smap Evaluation Tools Server version 13.11. This version has concentrated on some data cleansing functionality which as been requested by a team assessing the needs of people affected by Typhoon Haiyan.  The Speed Evidence project has provided funding.

New functionality

1. Updating data on the server prior to export. (Data Cleansing).
2. Ability to hide the graph legend as this sometimes obscures the data. http://blog.zarkman.eu/hiding-gaph-labels/
3. Bundling of Smap Uploader
4. Support for Apache 2.4

Data Cleansing

The following video shows how to update text values on the server.

The analyst training material has also been updated to included more detailed instructions data cleansing.

Other changes

A bug that prevented the creation of graphs when question names included dashes has been fixed.

Uploading of Polygons and Lines has been made more robust.  Previously if a valid Polygon had not been recorded (more than 2 points) then the survey was not uploaded.  Now the rest of the data is uploaded and the invalid Polygon / Line is discarded.

Availability

A downloadable tar file of the updated server should be available tomorrow.  Hosted servers will be progressively updated over the next few days.

I have released a patch to the Smap Analysis software in response to a request from the team in the Philippines who are responding to Typhoon Hainan.  This allows you to hide labels on a graph by clicking on an icon labelled “L” at the top right of the panel.  Clicking on the “L” again will show the labels.  This is available in the dashboard and in reports.

Graph with hidden labels. Note the “L” icon at top right.

When the labels are hidden you can see what each of the bars represent by moving your mouse over the bar.  This will show the label just for that bar along with the bar’s value.

This patch to the server also fixes a bug so that the description added by the analyst is now shown on the report.

This release is only available on a limited number of the hosted servers at the moment but will be included in the next monthly release.

The Smap Uploader tool is now available.  This will be bundled with the server in the next release of Smap.

Ideally you should never need to use Smap Uploader!  It is much more straightforward to connect the phones directly to the server over a network.  However you may have backed up your surveys and then the phone has been damaged, or the uploads from that phone may not work for some reason. In these cases Smap Uploader provides a fall back.

Click on the Smap Uploader button on http://dev.smap.com.au to download. You will need Java 6 or later https://java.com/en/download/index.jsp.  Save the downloaded file somewhere where you can find it again, possibly on your desktop.  Double click to start it.

Smap Uploader Screen

You can copy the forms from your phone using a USB cable.  The exact process may vary depending on the phone but commonly you will need to attach as a USB mass storage device. The forms can be founds under /sdcard/fieldTask/instances.  Each one will have its own directory where attachments are also stored.

In Smap Uploader choose the above folder and fill in the server name, your user id and your password. Then press submit. Progress will be shown in the status panel along with an hourglass.

If you have to stop sending part way through you can just exit Smap Uploader.  It will resume from the point you left off next time you select the form folder and press submit.

You may end up sending forms multiple times.  For example some forms could have been sent from the phone and then also sent from Smap Uploader.  In this case the duplicate forms will be discarded by the server.