Tag Archives: assessments

Forward Results to another Server

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Beginning in Smap version 14.03 you can add forwarding to a survey template.  This will result in each submitted result being forwarded on to the target server.

Key characteristics

  • Each forward link sends results from a single survey template to a single remote server
  • You can add multiple forward links to a template allowing you to forward results to many remote servers
  • Submissions are sent in one direction only. Hence if the target server is receiving results from multiple sources it will have a different view of the results than each of the sources
  • Forwarding links can be added to the target server as well. These can point back to the original source server but it ahs to be to a different survey on that server
  • Existing results will be forwarded if you add forwarding to a template that already has submitted results
  • Results will queue until there is a network connection before being forwarded
  • The target server can be another Smap server or any server that supports Java Rosa such as ODK Aggregate

Offline laptops

One way of using this forwarding feature is to install Smap on a laptop.  This laptop can be used to aggregate and analyse data collected on mobile phones in areas that do not have a reliable Internet connection.  You can upload the results from the phones to the local laptop over a wi-fi hotspot.  Once you connect the laptop to the Internet it can forward the results onto a cloud server so that they can be worked on by a distributed team.

Community Laptops

image (6)

Community laptops are an extension of the “offline laptop” concept.  Each community can maintain its local view of data collected on the phones.  However they can set up a forward link so that a consolidated view of all the data from all the communities can be aggregated.

Demonstration

The following video shows the forwarding of results from a Smap Server to an ODK Aggreate server.

How to add a forward link

  1. Create the same survey template on the local and remote server.  These templates can have different names on each server but should be the same template.  A good way to do this is to download the template as an XML file from one of the servers and then upload it to the other.
  2. On the source server, find your template on the template management screen and click the upward pointing arrow next to its name
  3. Click the button “Add Forward”
  4. Enter the url of the destination server
  5. Enter a user ID and password.  You should use a user id that only has privileges to complete surveys (enum) as the password is stored in the database. So don’t use your Admin user id!
  6. Press the button to refresh the list of available surveys on the remote server
  7. Select the survey that you want to update
  8. Save

You can monitor forwarded results on the monitor page by selecting the “forward” radio button.

Release of fieldTask v3.0

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Announcing fieldTask version 3.0. This release includes the changes in the odkCollect 1.4 release (thanks to the ODK team) along with the ability to send partially completed forms back to the server. You can download version 3 from google play and from the smap development server. It will be deployed onto other servers as they get upgraded.

ft3

fieldTask v3.0 Home Screen

1) Change Location. [Provided by ODK 1.4] There is a new ‘placement-map’ appearance for location questions.  If you use this “appearance” setting on a question of type “geopoint” then your current location will be shown on a map and you can do a long press on the map to change the position that will be recorded. The meaning of the 4 icons on the map is:

        1. Exit map without saving location
        2. Save location and exit map
        3. Place marker at current location
        4. Zoom to marker

location placement

2) New functions for date processing. [Provided by ODK1.4] Refer to the survey editing guideline and the example xls template.

3) Improved styling for phones with Android 3+. These will show an action bar with icons for some of the menu options. On smaller phones only one or two of the icons will be shown, the other menu options are accessible though the menu button.

icons

Android 2.2 phone menu showing all the icons. Android 3+ phones will show some icons on title bar, remaining menu options will be text when accessed through menu.

4) Access to question responses within repeating groups. [Provided by ODK 1.4].  This allows you to create one repeating group to get all the names of people in a household, then in a second repeating group you can ask detailed questions about each member of the household and refer to the name recorded for that householder. Refer to survey editing guideline and the example xls template.

5) Ability to defer constraint and “required” validation to the end of the survey. [Provided by ODK 1.4]. This can be enabled in the settings.

6) Sending partially completed forms back to the server.  If you have to save a survey half way through because it cannot be completed you can optionally send those results to the server.  After selecting “submit finished data” from the menu, press the menu button again and select “change view”. This will have two options “Show Complete Forms” and “Show Complete and Incomplete Forms”.  If you select the second option you will be able to see the saved incomplete forms and send them back to the server.

There will be an update to the server released by the 18th of October that will mark these incomplete surveys as “bad” with a reason of “incomplete”.  Hence they will not be included in exported spreadsheets or graphs unless the analyst marks them as “good”. If it is critical for you not to allow incomplete forms to be sent until the server is updated to mark them as bad by default, then defer use of fieldTask 3.0 until after the 18th of October.

Announcement of Smap Release – April 2013

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Dashboard panels are now only viewable by the user that created them.  No more sharing!  The concept of sharing all dashboard panels worked reasonably well when a project team was working collaboratively on a project.  But there were still issues, for example when a team member wanted to do some experimentation with graphs.  However there were significant problems during workshops when 30 odd people were creating and deleting panels independently and the system was trying to keep all of the panels in sync.   So I came to the conclusion that no-sharing is better than sharing everything.   If anyone has any ideas on how to introduce some managed sharing back in to the dashboard panels let me know.

You can now specify address fields from the previous survey in follow up tasks.  See picture below:

tasks

fieldTask works a little differently.  The menu option “get new forms” now goes direct to the server.  If you want to delete forms or data from the phone you will need to select “delete forms” from the main menu.  

Other changes:

  • More informative error messages when uploading templates
  • Surveys can be set in settings to automatically upload when they have been completed (with odk1.3)
  • In settings you can specify the use of forward and next buttons instead of swiping (with odk1.3)
  • Vertices of polygon questions are now shown on map panels.  Apart from allowing the user to look at question responses on each point of the polygon the display of these points make it easier to find small polygons on the map.  (This one for Mark)
  • The usual assortment of bug fixes

Announcement of Smap Release – February 2013

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The february release of Smap is out of development and undergoing pre-release testing.

New Features:

  1. Multi-projects.  A user with administrator privilege can now create a new project and assign users to that project.  This allows you to manage separation of projects on the same server.  A user will only see the survey templates and results for the projects that they are assigned.
  2. Pictures, videos and audio can be included as survey questions or options.  Any or all of these media types can be added, along with text, to help an enumerator in completing a survey.  This capability has been on the phone for a while as it is part of odkCollect.  However the ability to manage this media on the server is new.  (video)
  3. Publish reports to a Facebook group.  This extends the current ability to publish a report via email.  A menu option named “Discuss” has also been added to allow you to link to a new Facebook app from Smap Consulting, that summarises the discussions on the reports as a word cloud and shows the locations of reports on a map.  (video)
  4. Added ability to specify an export of data as XLS or CSV.  For XLS exports the following formatting is now applied:

  • Dates.  Formatted correctly for excel and always set to GMT.  To change the timezone in excel add the hours difference divided by 24.  You can now do calculations such as subtracting _start from _end to get the duration of the survey.
  • _device formatted as number so it does not show as scientific notation by default.
  • Links added to locations.  If you click on the link it will show on a map where the survey was completed.
  • Links added to pictures, video and audio.

Bugs Fixed

  1. Hourglasses were not always being shown when the system was busy
  2. Name of survey in monitor screen was not being shown.
  3. Could not filter by survey name in monitor screen.Burn Down Chart
  4. Running out of database connections under heavy load

This diagram is of the project burn down and is taken from Acunote, which is a great tool for managing Agile projects. The chart shows the rate of progress across the month and confirms that development was completed on time.  Of course any tasks that could not be done prior to the release date, and that could be moved, were simply put into the sprint for the March release.  Completing “on time” for an agile project is usually a given!