Start a survey from within a survey

While completing a survey on a phone or tablet with fieldTask the user can start another survey / form and then when they have finished that they are returned to their original survey. The data collected by these two surveys are linked for analysis.

Two new question types have been added; “parent_form”, “child_form”. The difference between these is in how the collected data is linked.

Launching a Parent Form

There might be many records in a form that point to a parent form.  For example you may be reporting problems on pieces of equipment.  So you open the problem report form and select the equipment identifier, then record the problems for that one piece of equipment. However if equipment has not already been added to the system then you can launch a parent form, from within your problem form, to create an entry for that equipment. You can then continue filling in the problem report knowing that it will be linked to the new piece of equipment for analysis. All of this works offline.

In the above example the key Question would hold the identifier for the piece of equipment.

Launching a child form

There might be many records in the child form that point to the first form . For example you may be registering students for school attendance and you encounter a student for which there is no record.  You can then launch a child form to create an entry for that student who will be linked to the school.

In the above example the key question would hold the identifier for the school.

Other Changes

• The online editor now greatly simplifies the setting of parameters and appearance. You can select these from options presented on the screen rather than having to type them in. This is particularly useful for cases like the search appearance where you can now select from a list of csv files or forms to reference and then select the columns from those that you want to include. No more awkward looking up of form identifiers! This is also useful when adding a new parent_form or child_form question type as you can simply select the form you want to launch using the parameters dialog.
• Added support for range widgets in webforms
• Allow backward navigation in a form to be prevented by using a setting on the server.