Tag Archives: evaluation tools

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

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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 Smap HTML / iPhone Evaluation Tools

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Announcing Smap Evaluation Tools Server version 13.09.  New functionality includes:

  1. Support for completing surveys on a web browser. Browsers need to support HTML5 and can be on a laptop, iPhone, Android or Windows Mobile .
  2. Automatic dropping of duplicate surveys.  Previously the duplicate would have been marked as “bad” so that it did not appear in exported results or graphs however these duplicates could still be seen in table views.
  3. Calculate questions are now shown in the exported spreadsheet in their correct position relative to other questions in the survey.  So if you add a question to calculate the age in months after a date of birth question, then age in months will appear after DOB in the exported results.
  4. If you explicitly specify a “start time”, “end time” or IMEI question in your survey then these are no longer automatically added by Smap as well

WebForm Evaluation Tool

webform

Screen shot of web form in Chrome browser on a  Mac laptop

Features

  • Uses the open source Enketo forms engine
  • (Should) work in any HTML5 capable browser
  • GPS coordinates
  • Multi- choice and single select questions
  • Integer and text questions
  • Uploading of photographs (on some browsers, those with better HTML5 support)
  • Repeating groups
  • Relevance
  • Works offline and saves results for submission later when there is a network connection

Issues

The web forms feature is really a beta release so you can expect to find some issues.  Report any you find and we will try to get them fixed in the next release.  Known issues include:

  1. Some odk 1.4 functions that depend on javarosa do not work.  For example the new date time functions.
  2. Surveys that have images in their questions or options will not work with webForms
  3. Large surveys may be slow particularly when downloading or expanding a conditional group
  4. Safari on iPhone has some additional restrictions:
  • File uploads are not supported on Safari / iPhone
  • Expansion of conditional groups that are made relevant based on responses to prior questions do not work

Phone Browsers

iphone

Situation Assessment using Safari on an iPhone

android

Situation Assessment using Chrome on Android

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Applications for the web forms feature

The ability to complete forms on web browsers adds a lot of flexibility to your data collection. For example it is now possible to send out an email or tweet with a link to a survey that the recipient can complete on their browser.

Installation

This is straightforward and very similar to previous installation.  Updated instructions are in the README file.  If you have an existing smap installation you should be able to just run the webformsInstall script to update the platform to support webForms (MySQL and PHP).  You can then deploy the updated application code as before.  Contact me if you have any issues.

If you are installing your own server you can get it from here.

Deployment onto Smap Managed Servers

I will progressively deploy this release onto the servers managed by Smap Consulting over the next few days.  However the ability to complete surveys using WebForms may not suit everyone.  Hence I will disable this functionality by default on each server unless you request that it be switched on.

Acknowledgements

Web Forms uses the excellent Enketo toolkit. This toolkit has been integrated into Smap by the following undergraduate students from RMIT who have done an excellent job.

  • HeeSien Ooi
  • Kar Ming Clement Kam
  • Kiman Sze
  • Mohamad Bahaa Maarouf
  • Shishir Chawla
  • Teck We Kee