QR code scanning on Android

Hi Tania :wave: This is a totally understandable request - it’s frustrating for sure that scanning barcodes in web forms is not possible yet. (See my comment on the original issue from 2015 here. The limitation is actually because the mobile browsers don’t yet natively support barcode scanning.

The good news is that there is work underway to add this functionality to browsers. See here. This is still experimental and not ready for widespread adoption. I would hope that the Enketo web forms software can be updated in the near future to take advantage of this underlying functionality once it is a bit more mature.

For now, the best option is to make sure team members use Android phones and install the Collect app. These devices are quite inexpensive and the setup procedure is pretty easy. Note that these team members don’t have to create their own KoboToolbox account. You can choose to give all collaborators the same account to submit data (user2). For example, you can just create one separate user that is used for entering all the data. Your user that owns the project (user1) can then share permissions with user2. All team members can use the same login information to configure their devices and immediately start collecting data.

To make this easier, you can set up one Android device with Collect using the username and password for user2. Then generate a QR code on that first Android device that you can then share with everyone on your team. They can scan this QR code to configure their Collect app, so they don’t even have to enter the username and password. See this article for details.

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