Briefcase option help: START PULL FROM LAST SUBMISSION

Support
1

Hi,

In ODK briefcase settings, I need to understand how this option "START PULL FORM LAST SUBMISSION PULLED" works. In my understanding, it should not really matter because on second pull, the briefcase automatically skips the download of the ones which already are downloaded (based on UUIDs I think), and only downloads the fresh ones. So, what's the use of this option?

Thanks,
Saad

2

Hi @Saad,
what you say is not completely true.
Whithout the option enabled
Briefcase downloads a list of submission instanceIDs and starts to check if the instance IDs where downloaded or not and in case yes it skips it.
If you have millions of submissions imagine the time lost on checking this.
With the option enabled it bypasses this check and goes directly to pull the new submissions.

Without the option enabled:

image
image317×934 6.27 KB

With the option enabled:
image

more detailed info on this forum post and here

1 Like
3

Great. This is what I wanted to know exactly.

One thing: If it compares only UUID, what would happen to instances which are partially downloaded? Are they marked incomplete somewhere, because their folder is surely created on local computer, only their attachments are incomplete. Example: I have a submission with 7 images, and when I abort the briefcase download, only 4 images have been downloaded fully. Will briefcase download this incomplete one too?

Thanks,
Saad

4

I am having another issue here. My server has 700 forms. I downloaded 60 yesterday and cancelled briefcase. Now when I enable this option and try the download, briefcase says DOWNLOADING SUBMISSION 1 OF 153! How is this happening? Does briefcase leave any track of download on the server, or just track locally?

5

Locally.
Try to clear the pull history.
image

6

Yes, but will this not kill the whole point of using this feature? The local inventory will be reset, no?

This above scenario (missing form IDs) happens to me a lot. That's why I thought it better to ask on the forum about this briefcase feature usage.

7

Have you ever try to use the Command Line Interface?

https://docs.opendatakit.org/briefcase-using/#pulling-forms-from-aggregate

with the parameter
-ii,--include_incomplete