In this release the online editor is a little more stable, although still Beta. We have also started to add some new features that make use of the potential of the online editor.
New Features
Multiple Forms updating a single table of data
With this feature you can have a single table of data and multiple forms contributing to it. Each form can have unique questions so that it is the only form that provides answers to those questions but each form can also answer questions that are also answered by other forms. To help you work out whats going on in your results there is a new “informational” column that shows the name of the form that contributed each row of data.
If seems a bit confusing then you probably don’t need it. For assessments it is still good practice to only have one version of one form used by all data collectors. However some potential uses for this new feature are:
- Validating or annotating survey results. In the validation form you can set the questions that also appear in the data collection survey as “read only” and then add some additional questions for the reviewer to answer.
- Performing follow up surveys where an issue identified in the first survey is addressed.
- Having a different survey for each region where most of the questions are common but some are specific to the region. You can achieve something similar by using “relevance” on questions however this requires the user to enter correctly the region they are using. If there was a separate form then they would not be able to answer questions for the wrong region.
The following You Tube video demonstrates how to use this feature. The scenario is for a medical clinic where the patient first enters some of their details and then the doctor expands on the patient record with a diagnosis.
Key steps to share a table are:
- Create a form
- On the admin page select “Create New Form”
- Select the checkbox that says “Base on existing form”
- Select the form to share with
- Select the checkbox that says “Store results in a shared table”
- You can then modify the second form, deleting questions, adding new ones etc.
Basing a new form on an existing form
When you create a new form in the editor you can select a checkbox to base it on an existing form. By default this form’s data will go into its own table, unless you further select the checkbox to “share results”.
Kobotoolbox API
Some of the services from the KoboToolbox API are now supported. More information is available form the Smap koboToolbox API help. If you are developing applications that have to work with both Smap Server and kobo then this API may be useful. Contact us if there are specific API endpoints that you need for your application.
This feature enhances Smap’s conformance to standards. The main standard we use is JavaRosa which specifies the services that a mobile device uses to connect to the server. This means that you can use any ODK compatible device with Smap including odkCollect and GeoOdk as well as fieldTask. The kobo toolboxApi specifies services to access collected data and administer the server. Hence you should be able to use software built with these services with the Smap server.
Bugs Fixed
- Scheduled Time was not included in tasks, only the date.
- If you had a quotation character in a form name then when you exported the results for that form it would not allow you to include the question text in the first row of a results export.
- If you had more than one “select” question with the same name then when loading from an XLS file the choices for one of the questions were dropped.
- The order in which questions were shown was not consistent between the dashboard and the export.
