Easiest way to operationalize odk form creation?

Support
1

Hi!

I am building an R package to help people garden! :slight_smile: I will be using ODK to let them gather up their data. In fact, I may even find a way to make it accessible outside the R community, but for now, let's focus the scope.

A bit of background as to how this will work. Users will:

out of scope

a. come up w/ a list of their plants

b. feed that into a function in the package, which will add a GUID and convert to QR codes, which it puts in a html file suitable for printing and attaching to your plant labels.

/out of scope

THIS IS THE PART I WANT HELP WITH

c. upload their own version of the attached file actions.xlsx (13.4 KB)

d. gather their data into it.

end of part I want help with

I want each user to have their own version (because privacy, security, whatever), which will require each user setting up their own backend. I think using the google cloud will be easiest, but I'm not married to that. Anyway, I'm curious what's the best and easiest way to provide that functionality. This is what I've come up with so far.

function 1:

createInventory <- function(){
  ## saves an excel file locally, based on the attachment I put above in this post
  ## spits out instructions for users to understand how to upload to the google cloud
  ## spits out instructions telling users to grab the URL of the uploaded sheet, as well as the results tab
}

So now the user knows where the sheet uploaded, which will be the submissionID. They will use this in the next function:

createApp <- function(submissionID){
  ## Creates a .xml file, which is exactly what comes out of converting the above attachment
  ## replaces the default "submissionID" with user submitted one (what they got from above) in the settings tab
  ## saves the .xml locally
  ## gives instructions to upload to google drive
}

Lastly, I'd have to give the user instructions on how to download Collect, and how to change their server to google, and they would be done!

The above process isn't IMPOSSIBLE, but it is a bit annoying, no? There is a chance I might be able to automate the submission of files up and down, but that has complications of its own.

Is there a simpler way that I'm overlooking?

Thanks community, you're the best!

1 Like
2

@yanokwa who could help with this?

3

The workflow seems too complicated to me, tbh.

4

@Trung I know... that's why I'm asking! lol. Basically, what's the easiest way I could set things up so that random people create their own ODK data gathering system?

5

I'm not sure, I feel like it's a wrong problem to put (sorry for the word wrong). I feel like garndeners are not that tech savy to run such a system, regardless how easy it is to set up. I'm using R myself. Love to catch up further if you like.

1 Like