Migrating data from another platform to KoBoToolbox

Hi everyone. We are transitioning our data collection work from SurveyMonkey to Kobo (Humanitarian) and would like to keep all of our data stored in the same place, if possible.

We can export our data from SurveyMonkey in XLSX or CSV, but the data will always come out in a single “flat” file. From what I can tell, there are a few ways to get data into Kobo without manually populating the forms:

  1. the “bulk upload” page: This seems to require individual XML instances that we don’t have
  2. ODK Briefcase: This also seems to require zipped individual XML instances that we don’t have
  3. an API from this thread**

Question 1: Is there a convenient way to convert an Excel or CSV file into appropriately formatted individual XML instances for bulk upload or Briefcase push? I know Excel can map to XML schema easily, but this seems different. I can write a script to create individual text/XML files for each row, but where will I get the UUIDs?

Question 2: The API seems like the most promising way forward. Unfortunately, I’ve never done this before… can someone give me some tips about how to use the API for this purpose?

Question 3: Is there any other way to migrate data to Kobo?

Thanks so much. I’ve been searching everywhere weeks and I really don’t know what else to do.

Hi,

As for your question 2: I found navigating the API is easier when using Postman, https://app.getpostman.com/app/download/win64

In the API request in Postman, in the Headers tab, in the Key field, put “Authorization” and in the Value field put “Basic AbCdEFGhijkl”, in which AbCdEFGhijkl should be replaced with your normal Kobo password, but in Base64 encoding.
Here you can convert your normal password to Base64 encoding: https://www.base64encode.org/

This way you can do POST, GET, DELETE, requests to the Kobo API endpoints.

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Hi @emanlapig, @emanlapig

Would you mind having a look at the workaround outlined by @tinok. It should solve your issue:

Have a great day!

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@emanlapig, @bert12, you should also be able to migrate projects from the source server to the destination server (using ODK Briefcase) as outlined in the post discussed previously: