Hello everyone,
I’m currently working on a large-scale agriculture and plantation project (several tens of thousands of hectares). We will collect various types of data (related to staff, suppliers, and project activities). We are looking to set up an automated and robust data collection and analysis system using KoboToolbox.
Our main goals are:
- To have a database that updates automatically with every form submission
- To automate data analysis (even if setting it up is a bit complex)
- To provide managers with a simple, practical, real-time visualization of project progress (e.g., basic graphs showing the number of hectares plowed per day)
- To automatically generate daily or weekly summary reports
I find Kobo to be an excellent data collection tool, but it seems not well-suited for analysis (you can create forms that summarize other forms, but I find this quite limited), and also not ideal for flexible data storage and flexible visualisation.
My current idea is to use Python to:
- Call the Kobo API to fetch new data
- Automatically transfer raw data to a shared storage (Google Drive, as used by the client) so that it can be accessed and updated by multiple people
- Analyze the data: check for duplicates, errors, totals, sums, and perform other simple numeric analysis
- Set up a data visualization platform: for example, display the total hectares plowed per day — using Google Looker Studio for instance
- Automatically generate simple summary reports
- Use a task scheduler to run the Python script daily or weekly
This approach would allow us to use a minimal number of tools, with maximum automation.
My questions:
- Can you confirm that Kobo is not really designed for simple data analysis?
- What do you think of the approach described (Python + Drive + Looker Studio)? Have you used any alternative methods for handling data analysis in large-scale projects?
- Are there any advanced training resources for KoboToolbox (especially for API usage or external integrations)?
Thank you very much for any feedback, suggestions, or shared experiences!
