ODK Aggregate v2.0 Beta

Releases Betas
#1

We need your help to ship great software, so please download this beta, try it, and report the issues you find. The release will be delayed until all reported issues with the beta are fixed.

If you have an ongoing data collection campaign, please do not install the beta and put your data at risk! Instead, set up a new instance on Digital Ocean or try installing Aggregate on a local machine.

The important changes to verify in this release are:

  • Removed AppEngine support.
  • Removed ODK Tables support.
  • Removed Google Accounts support for credentials.
  • Removed publishers: Google Fusion Tables, Ohmage Json Server, Redcap Json Server.
  • Improved temporal data management by storing the original timezone in incoming data (if present).

If you have a bit more time, please also verify the other changes in the release notes. Again, this beta will ship in early February as a final release unless you report issues below.

Download beta

7 Likes
#2

Hello,

Thanks for sharing the v2.0 Beta. The AppEngine support has been removed, is that mean the AppEngine support will not be available anymore? If so, that will be a little difficult for some ODK user with limited knowledge of dealing with cloud providers like Digital Ocean. Hopefully everyone will get families with the new setup process . However, at the initial stage little more detailed installation process will be helpful.

Thanks,
Imran

1 Like
#3

Hi, @A.N.M_AL-IMRAN!

Support for AppEngine will be available on the v1.x branch, which will continue to receive bugfixes. Removal of AppEngine support will only affect to the v2.x releases.

We will write a post about this particular change in the coming days, before v2.0 is officially released.

Regarding the installation process, yes: we want to provide plenty of documentation and instructions on how to deploy Aggregate on different providers. We will focus on DigitalOcean first, but we will be adding other common providers such as AWS and Linode shortly after the release.

3 Likes
#4

Dear Guillermo,

Thanks so much. would love to try v2.0 too.

Imran

1 Like
#5

That's great!

I'll try to have a complete DigitalOcean setup guide asap so that users like you can try it.

In any case, we will be releasing installers for in-house deployments and a VirtualBox VM as always.

2 Likes
#6

Hola Guillermo,

any fixed date for the official release... Looking forward to use it on production.

#7

Not yet, although we're aiming for the first week of February.

The first round of Q&A testing has already been done and it went well. We will probably release a second beta next week with an automatic updater and improved docs.

#8

Heads up! We've released ODK Aggregate v2.0.0-beta.1 with some bug fixing goodness and complete CloudConfig setup instructions.

We believe that this will be a great replacement for the AppEngine environment. We have started with DigitalOcean but other will eventually make it to the list of supported cloud providers.

At this point, we want to encourage users to try out our cloud deployment instructions and give us feedback about it.

3 Likes
#9

Hi @ggalmazor,

I tried the installation of the beta 1 on Digital Ocean.
Few comments on the instructions:

  1. I would add some more info/instruction on how to setup a domain that should be as a pre-requisite for the installation
    (maybe also a link to
    How To Point to DigitalOcean Nameservers From Common Domain Registrars)

  2. to get your custom CloudConfig script, it is not clear that you need to clone the repo to run it (because after you run the script you need the /assets/cloud-config.yml.tpl)

  3. to run the build.sh the easiest way for a user is to launch a git bash inside the folder containing the script (e.g. add an instruction like "right click and select 'Git Bash Here' ")

  4. in the last point better to write explicitely that the administrator user has username "administrator"
    All works and at the end I managed the installation except that I get an error on changing the administrator password (JSON change-password request to https://127.0.0.1/ssl/user-manage-passwords failed).

final comment (wish for a future release).. It would be nice a sort of "wizard" as it is in aggregate 1 maybe to generate the cloud-config.yml instead of running a script.

1 Like
#10

Thanks for trying out the beta, @aurdipas! Your feedback is super valuable.

We've already thinking of better alternatives to some things that you've pointed out.

One thing is for sure: having the build script in the instructions, even if it's presented as an alternative to using some template, looks likea bad idea for the average user. I'll make sure that the docs give only the template option and we can leave the script for a more techie version of the instructions inside the code repo.

Regarding the domain names, I think we need to point people to providers such as https://freedns.afraid.org, which offer subdomains for free.

Just for the record, I want to point out that the bug you've reported about changing a user's passwords has been filed and solved. Hopefully, we can release a beta.2 today with the fix.

1 Like
#11

Heads up! v2.0.0-beta.2 has just been released with a couple of fixes thanks to your invaluable feedback!!!

Keep it coming!

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#12

I installed the beta 2 on Digital Ocean (very good documentation now).
I wanted to try to download the data with briefcase (v1.13.1) but after connecting and selecting the form to pull I get the following error message:

Fetching form definition
Unexpected error: Connect to 127.0.0.1:8080 [/127.0.0.1] failed: Connection refused: connect while accessing: http://127.0.0.1:8080/formXml?formId=1 A network login screen may be interfering with the transmission to the server.

1 Like
#13

Thanks Aurelio, I will look into it

#14

I've filed https://github.com/opendatakit/aggregate/issues/402 to solve this

Meanwhile, we will have to delay the v2.0.0 release a little bit to get the fix in.