I’m building a new form that will be shared with specific users and I have the following requisites:
Being able to fill the web form while offline, is ideal (btw, we won’t be using the Collect app because it’s a pretty extensive form and it’s easier to instruct users to do it on the computer using their web browser).
Each user should only submit once (overall, there should be only one submission per user).
Every user should be able to edit their submission and re-submit (this is for those cases where we detect errors in the submission and talk to the user in real life).
So I was wondering which settings I have to define, to achieve what I want.
These are my concerns:
In Form settings > Collectdata, I see many options in the dropdown, but not one that allows for “Online-Offline (once per respondent).” I’ve read the documentation at Collecting Data through Web Forms — KoboToolbox documentation but it doesn’t talk about a scenario like mine.
In Share project, would “View form”, “Add submissions”, “Edit submissions from specific user (themselves)”, be the correct settings?
You should be able to collect your data with the web browser without any issues.
Regarding your second query:
You can control this as outlined in the support article, but the issue is that if the user changes the browser and tries to make submissions, then the system will not control it. However, you could use the dynamic data attachment feature to control this, as outlined in this community post discussed previously:
Regarding your third query:
This is possible through the row-level permission settings. But the issue could be related to managing and sharing the project with a long list of users.
Hey @Kal_Lam
I have a follow-up question. I appreciate your assistance.
I feel like these two needs are connected:
Being able to fill the web form while offline
Each user should only submit once
Our questionnaire is quite extensive and some respondents are located in developing countries — because of this, we think that Offline use is important.
The questionnaire is to be filled only once per respondent. The respondent fills it themselves using their own device. It’s not a field survey where the data enumerator is interviewing multiple people.
I initially thought the Collect data setting “Online-only (once per respondent)” would help prevent multiple submissions, but from reading your answer, it seems this is a cookie-based mechanism that prevents multiple submissions from a single browser, but if the user changes browser or changes device, then obviously he would be able to submit again. Am I understanding it correctly? I think the article should be more explicit on how the system works.
Right now at this very moment, I’m not too fond of adding a lot of complexity to the form logic (I honestly didn’t look too deep into the example you gave but will definitely return to it at a later stage). The built-in basic protection should work.
But again looking at the Data collect settings, there isn’t an option that offers both “Offline” and “Once per respondent”:
Online-Offline (multiple submission)
Online-Only (multiple submissions)
Online-Only (single submission)
Online-only (once per respondent)
So I’m thinking that I should do the following, please tell me if I’m going in the right direction:
Configure the form for “Online-Offline (multiple submission)”.
Instruct the users verbally and in written form, that they can only submit the form once. We can also control this situation manually (via Kobotoolbox’s Data screen, navigating through the data will easily show if there’s multiple submissions under a certain username).
And this is my third need:
Every user should be able to edit their submission and re-submit (this is for those cases where we detect errors in the submission and talk to the user in real life).
I shared a screenshot but this is where your answer was not very clear, @Kal_Lam . Are the settings that I proposed correct or not? I understand there would be some manual labour, but we have a specific number of respondents and I could certainly configure the sharing setting one by one.
I have done some testing. The settings I had in mind are good.
Here are my findings:
The user can view the form on Kobotoolbox’s projects page (though this is not 100% ideal because there’s many things that they can see and do, including being able to clone the project and download the XLSform which I don’t like…).
As expected, the user can make multiple submissions (we’ll have to instruct the users NOT to do this, it’s fine).
The user can Edit their submissions (btw, viewing the form is a requirement for being able to Edit).
The user can export and download the data (it only shows their own data, so it’s fine).
