An intern accidentally put a note field as required and deployed the form

User Support Data Management
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1

Hey @Kal_lam, I trust you are well.

There are instances when a coding error on an XLS form is discovered when the team has already been dispatched to collect data for example an intern accidentally put a note field as required and deployed the form. Only for the data collectors to face that challenge. How can they be assisted considering that resources only favour deletion of a form and uploading a new one but some had already submitted what they collected.

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@bkgwadi, yes when you have a note question with a mandatory response, you/your enumerators will not be able to upload the collected data to the server. If this is the case, you will need to upload your data to the server manually as outlined in this support article Manually Uploading Submissions.

Once all the data are in the server, you could make necessary changes to your form (by changing the mandatory response of the note question type) and then redeploy the project. You could then download that uploaded form to your app for the enumerators.

3

General hint, please: Never deploy a form to the field without systematic testing before.

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4

Note, [no pun intended…] that mandatory note questions can actually serve a legitimate purpose, which is why it was previously decided not to have pyxform throw an error or warning about them (!).

Never deploy a form to the field without systematic testing before.

This cannot be overstated! :+1: :+1: :+1:

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5

Good day.

Even after exhaustive testing, you would discover that there is probably one or two rows where some coding was “missed” even though the form is working well for example you accidentally cross code for males yet it was supposed to be for females.

We all deploy after exhaustive testing but somehow some stuff is missed.

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Hi, perhaps a warning from the validator step could be helpful?

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perhaps a warning from the validator step

Feel free to raise it again on the ODK thread (link above); any validation error/warning would most likely be implemented via an additional pyxform check.

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8

Piloting your form can be really helpful in identifying issues with your form that you missed during development.
Also, you do need to upload a new form, just download the xlsform with issues, fixed the issue and reupload/replace the form. Inform your users to Get Blan Form if using App, or if using link just refresh