Finally version 15.09 is available. The last release was 15.04 way back in April. The reason for the long delay has been the development of the hybrid iOS / Android app Zarkman Mobile. Hence the other changes to the system are relatively minor.
Zarkman Mobile
Zarkman Mobile is available for download from google play store and Apple app store.
Zarkman Mobile can only be used with Zarkman servers and hosted Smap servers. A “hosted Smap server” is one that is installed by Smap and has a domain name ending in smap.com.au. Ie https://xxx.smap.com.au.
Other Features
Languages
Hindi has been added as a language on the server thanks to a contribution from SDRC. Unfortunately I haven’t made available any more pages for translations so there is still a lot of English text. In fact the server may have gone backwards a little in this respect.
Loading templates with data
More details in http://blog.zarkman.eu/using-templates-pre-loaded-data/. This requires the latest version of fieldTask which is included in this release and is in Google Play Store. This feature allows you to do “red-lining” that is mark up an image by drawing on it as the answer to a question.
Data Cleaning – Set codes
You can now update any text question based on the results in another text question. This allows you to set codes to correspond to arbitrary text. For example if you have 10 rows where the value of a text questions is: “two wheeled vehicle”. Then you can set a code in another question for that answer.
Formatting of PDF export of templates
The formattng has been improved and there are a number of appearance options you can specify to change the columns, background colours and sizes of the table cells.
| Appearance | Result | Comments |
| pdfno | Question will not be included in a PDF download | Available version 15.09 |
| pdflabelw_## | Set the width of the question label. Replace “##” with a number from 0 to 10. | Available version 15.09
Setting the width to 10 will make the question answer appear on the next line. |
| pdfheight_## | Set the height of the box allowed for the question answer. This is in points. | Available version 15.09
This value only applies when exporting a blank template. If there is data in the export then the size of the data will determine the height of the box. A value of 150 would be roughly 10 rows. |
| pdfcols_##_##_##…. | Each ## is a column. Replace each one with a number indicating the width of the column, all of these numbers should add up to 10. Hence the maximum number of columns is 10. | Available version 15.09
For example: pdfcols_3_4_3 3 columns
pdfcols_5_5 Two equal sized columns pdfcols_10 Single column The column settings apply to the question that you add the appearance to, and all subsequent questions until it is overridden by another pdfcols appearance. |
| pdflabelbg_##_##_## | Sets the background color for the label. Use Hex RGB values | Available version 15.09
For example: pdflabelbg_FF_00_00 Set the background to red. |
| pdfvaluebg_##_##_## | Sets the background color for the value. Use Hex RGB values | Available version 15.09
For example: pdflabelbg_FF_00_00 Set the background to red. |
| pdfspace_## | Insert a gap in the table before this question. | The spacing is in points. 1/72 of an inch. |
| pdfnewpage | Start the question on a new page | |
| pdflabelcaps | Put the label in capitals | |
| pdflabelbold | Make the label bold | |
| pdfaddto_xxxxx | replace xxxxx with the name of another question. The answer to the question that has this appearance will be appended to the answer of the specified question. | Answers from different question are comma separated. Commonly you would use this on an “other please specify” question and you would also set the appearance “pdfno” so that the other response appears with the select question. |
Bugs Fixed
- If you attempt to export a survey with a “#” in its name then the export will fail. The # will now be replaced by an underscore.
- There was no validation on “from” and “to” dates in the settings dialog in analysis. These are now validated and you can select the date from a calendar.
- If you used placement-map as an appearance option for a geopoing question then the map was not being shown. The google maps now works.
- The word “null” will no longer appear as its name when you temporarily save a form. This name can be set from the answers to questions in the survey, this feature is set up in the “settings” tab of the xls form. However if you don’t specify the instance_name there then the name shown in fieldTask will now be set to the name of the form.
- Added filtering on “whole of survey” table panels. Previously date filtering only worked when querying on a specific question. Now you can view results for a date range or a data value.
Installing your own server
Version 15.09 is available for download from http://smaphs.com/downloads.shtml
Apache Web Server version 2.2 is no longer supported. You should install Apache version 2.4 prior to upgrading to Smap 15.09. There have also been changes to the way the Apache web server configuration is set up. Please check the readme file included in the tar file.
Note initially version 15.09.03 was made available for download. This has now been updated to 15.09.04. The most significant issue was in the smap.conf which is the apache2 configuration for accessing the sever without encryption. If you installed the older version and you arn’t using https then send an email to the smap-suite google group and I will send you the updated configuration file. This update also fixes a bug with creating new organisations.