Tag Archives: data collection

FieldTask5 Beta Now Available on Google Play

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FieldTask5 is now available as a Beta Test download on Google Play. This is a major upgrade with significant improvements to performance, reliability and Android compatibility while retaining all the Smap features you rely on.

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If you are interested in the code it is available in GitHub at https://github.com/smap-consulting/fieldTask5.

What’s Changed from FieldTask4

ODK Collect Upstream Merge

FieldTask began life as a fork of Collect, we then modified it to add case management and the many other capabilities that make it a better M&E tool. It is a good idea to keep forks of software in sync with the upstream source so that enhancements and bug fixes to that code can be included however this was difficult in this case for the following reasons:

  • The Collect team have been progressively re-writing the Java code into Kotlin making automatic identification of Smap changes difficult.
  • Collect have been migrating code into modules. So a file modified by Smap moves and it is again hard to detect Smap functionality and automatically merge it.
  • Collect like implementing the latest fashion in design patterns so single files get broken up into multiple files or vice versa again making automatic merge difficult.
  • Low motivation. Each merge does not usually bring obvious improvement. However over time the change do reach a critical mass of usefulness much like upgrading infrastructure components.

The result was that FieldTask4 has not been merged with Collect for 4 years. For FieldTask5 we started from scratch with a fresh fork and then reapplied all of the Smap features.

From now on we expect to keep FieldTask5 in sync with Collect using AI coding tools. This is the sort of problem that these tools are good at and human programmers are bad at.

Changes:

  1. FieldTask5 now targets Android 15 (SDK 35) and compiles against SDK 36, ensuring compatibility with the latest Android devices and security requirements.
  2. Adoption of Jetpack Compose for new UI components, providing a smoother, more responsive experience
  3. Updated Material Design 3 components throughout the app
  4. Improved form entry navigation and validation — answers are now validated without requiring a save, giving faster feedback
  5. Scale bar added to Google Maps and OpenStreetMap map views
  6. Improved OSM max zoom levels for better detail
  7. Refactored map fragments for better stability and performance
  8. Enhancements to entity form processing — creation, updating, editing, approval and locking
  9. Improved reliability of barcode scanning across devices

New Smap Features in FieldTask5

The focus of this release was just to include the existing FieldTask4 functionality in the new FieldTask5 fork. However we did find time to add a few enhancements:

  1. You can now refresh your forms and tasks by dragging down on the Form list or task list page. This is standard Android behaviour for initiating a refresh.
  2. Completed instances that cannot be sent to the server because the form on the server has been blocked or deleted will now be shown as orphans with a grey icon. They will not be sent to the server until the form is unblocked or undeleted. This contrasts with fieldTask4 behaviour where these instances were sent and a “403 – forbidden” error would then be shown. This message will however still be shown the first time you refresh with that instance and it finds out that it is an orphan.
Instances view with an orphan instance for the survey Barcodes NFC shown in grey and a couple of cases.

Accessing the FieldTask5 beta

FieldTask5 has not yet replaced FieldTask4 in the Google play store. But you can access it by joining the beta program.

Step 1 — Join the Beta Program

  1. Search for fieldTask in the play store, tap on the name/icon to open its detail page, scroll down to the “join the beta section” and tap join.

Step 2 — Install FieldTask5

  1. After joining the beta program, go to the FieldTask listing on Google Play
  2. You should see a note indicating the beta version is available
  3. Tap “Update” or “Install”

Step 3 — Provide Feedback

As a beta tester your feedback is invaluable. If you encounter any issues or have suggestions:

Important Notes

  • The beta version will replace any existing FieldTask installation on your device since it shares the same application ID
  • Your existing data and settings should be preserved during the upgrade
  • Beta releases may contain bugs — we recommend backing up important data in the app before upgrading
  • You can leave the beta program at any time from the same testing link and revert to the stable release

We look forward to your feedback as we work toward the stable release of FieldTask5!

Two Million Submitted Surveys

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We have just gone past the 2 million mark in the number of surveys submitted to the Smap Consulting servers.   It took 6 years for the first million and 11 months for the second. So usage is accelerating.

Smap started as a project involving World Vision, RMIT and IBM in 2008 with the aim of making data collection faster, with better quality and lower cost.   Nowadays it is being used on a daily basis by organisations and individuals to achieve those goals for themselves.

Smap Server version 13.12 with Time Series Analysis

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Announcing the release of Smap Evaluation Tools Server version 13.12. The time series analysis functionality in this release has been funded by the Speed Evidence project. This is to assist in the long term response to Typhoon Haiyan.

New functionality

  1. Time Series Analysis.  Showing trends over time using graphs, maps and tables in the analysis module.
  2. Server side calculations.  There are only two functions available at the moment; area of a polygon and length of a line or the perimeter of a polygon.  However other functions could be added such as the calculation of Z-score anthropometric indicators.
  3. Export of attributes from parent forms to shape files.  If you select a child form containing a geometry and export to a shape file then all the attributes of the parent (up to the maximum of 255) will also be exported.
  4. Specification of default language.  The default language to show on the phone can now be specified by selecting “view/edit” link next to the survey name on the template management page.
  5. Support for Internet Explorer has been improved however it is still not supported, that is I haven’t tested this release against IE.

Availability

Hosted servers will be progressively updated over the next week or so.  The download for this release will be available by the 19th of January.

 

 

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