I am currently supporting an organization in systematizing their Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) data collection process. We are migrating away from a workflow based on Microsoft Teams and shared Word documents toward a more structured approach using KoboToolbox (XLSForm).
While the organization is excited about data integrity, they are struggling with the transition because their current “Cloud Office” workflow relies heavily on two specific features that seem missing in the standard XLSForm paradigm:
Collaborative/Progressive Filling: Multiple team members “tile” different parts of a report progressively over a month. In Word, this is seamless. In Kobo (Enketo), drafts appear to be locked to a single browser/device until submission, making real-time collaborative drafting difficult.
Inline Commenting System: They use Word’s sidebar comments and @mentions extensively to discuss data points while filling them in. They need a way to leave internal notes or flags for colleagues within the data collection interface itself.
The Puzzle: How can we replicate this “conversational” data entry in KoboToolbox? We have considered:
Post-submission editing workflows where a user re-opens the form in Enketo to add updates.
Has anyone successfully implemented a “collaborative drafting” or “commenting” workflow within the Kobo/ODK ecosystem?
We are looking for any creative workarounds, XLSForm patterns, or integrated tools (e.g., connecting Kobo to a dashboard with commenting) that have worked for your teams.
Would also weight whether KoboToolbox is the right tool for this job, or if there are alternative tools that I should be considering for this specific use-case, or complementary strategies that could complete the picture.
@nicopace, if you’re working with an XLSForm, consider uploading it as a Google Sheet to enable collaborative updates across teams. Keep in mind, however, that adding certain questions haphazardly can disrupt the logic and expressions tied to other questions. To ensure everything remains intact, it’s advisable to have one person review and make final adjustments once the team has completed their collaborative updates.
The issue with this approach is that you lose all the features that XLSForms bring, like conditionals, calculated fields, repeated groups, and so on.
I was looking for insights on workflows that could happen within the boundaries of KoboToolbox (to benefit from client side validation, form expressiveness, audit, etc), and adding collaborative features as mentioned before.
One approach could be to invite users to edit a submitted form… but the challenge approach is that it is impossible to do multi-user editing, and I am not sure if the UI gives you any hint on whether there is someone else editing a certain form … so it wouldn’t be safe to do that.
If I understand correctly, the organisation wants different individuals to be able to complete sections of a report using a published XLS form? Sounds like a really interesting use of Kobo/ODK!
I wonder if their new longitudinal survey tool is relevant here, see Building Better Longitudinal Surveys with Dynamic Data Attachments | KoboToolbox. It wouldn’t enable real-time collaboration, but users could potentially submit a version of the form after every single modification and others could reopen and modify/update the form with their contributions?
I’m interested to know if anyone has suggestions for an equivalent to in-line comments/mentions. I can only think of having additional text boxes to enable commentary and discussion (perhaps to track changes), but this wouldn’t ‘tag’ other users like online tools do.
