Restricting user to sumbit data when they are not on the live version in Kobocollect App

User Support Data Collection
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Hi! Support Team,

First just littler back ground and then I will come to issue-
We are implementing a tool in which there are huge no. of Health project ar listed and they are submitting data. There is a time when some projects closes, we remove the project from the list in the tool and deploy new version of the tool. But, some time users can’t manage to download live version of tool and submit data using the closed project that is actually closed. That creates data quality issue for use. Is there a way, we can restrict users to submit data if they are not on the same (live) version of the tool.

Thanks in advance for your support.

Kind Regards,
Raushan

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Hello @raushan.jha ,
If you archive your closed project, then no one can find it. Read the post below. It will help you to solve your problem.
https://support.kobotoolbox.org/archiving_projects.html

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@raushan.jha, the Collect Android App cannot distinguish a form whether it’s using the old version or the updated version especially if you are collecting data in a remote place (in an offline mode). If you are however on an online mode, then you could make timely checks to see if the app has the latest version. However, the issue is that even if you are collecting data in an older form version you can still submit the submission of the old form version to the server. And the server too does not restrict this.

The best option for data collection is to finalize your form first and then make protests for the same. Once everything is fine, start with your data collection.

However, the situation is not always as advised above. So, the option that you could have at such moments is to let the enumerators know that a new form version is available by cascading the announcement to all the enumerators (through various channels you use which could include phones, SMS, and so on).

The second option is to be on an online mode and keep the following settings for your Collect Android App: Settings>Form management>Form update (Blank form update mode>Exactly match server). So with this setting under your app, the app will start checking the server in a certain interval of time that you set under the Form update>Automatically update frequency. But please also be informed that the device’s battery drains pretty fast under this app’s configuration.