ODK Central - Single External Dataset for Multiple Forms

[noel]

Hi,

Does anyone know if there is a way to have an external data set on ODK central that is not just a CSV file connected to an individual form but a single online data set which several forms can pull from?

If not, does anyone know if this is expected to be a future feature?

Best regards,

Noel

[mathieubossaert]

Hi @noel ,
you should take a look to the new and growing entities and datasets feature

[noel]

Thanks Mathieu!

Should I assume that this is a future rather than current feature?

It does look much more extensive than what I currently am able to do but just wondering whether I am doing something wrong or simply that I need to wait for this new feature to be ready.

[mathieubossaert]

I think this post by @LN will give you a good idea of what you can already do and what you will be able to do with datasets :

Entity-based data collection

Not currently but we know those are important to add soon. Right now entities can only be created, not updated through any means at all. The model we are currently planning on is that submission edits do NOT affect entities. In the future, submissions will be able to create, update or archive entities. Once a submission has performed that action, it is essentially "unlinked" from the entity it acted on. Edits are complex no matter what but we think the model described above is the easiest to…

and this was one of the discussion points at the January TAB meeting:

ODK TAB Call - 2023-01-04

These calls bring together the Technical Advisory Board for the ODK suite (@TAB) to discuss roadmaps, working groups, and other issues of technical governance. Everyone is welcome to come to these calls, but only TAB members may talk. The calls are held every four weeks on Zoom. We put the agenda and recording of every call in this document. Our next call will be Wed, January 4. The meeting time should be shown in your timezone above. The agenda is tentatively as follows: Review ODK's Entit…

[noel]

Thanks Matthieu, that is great information.

For the moment a centralised entity which cannot be modified meets my requirements anyway. That is assuming it can be "modified" by deleting and replacing a data set.

[yanokwa]

You can't yet delete or replace, but that's coming soon! https://docs.getodk.org/central-entities/ describe the other limitations.

[marabenta]

We have a hacky way of having this function, which uses another application (Drive Autosync) to pair the contents of a shared Google drive with the relevant media folder for our forms on the devices. For us it gets around the current limitation of Central entities, which is that of needing to approve submissions before they get added to the datasets. We run SQL scripts to produce the external csv files and run these as cron jobs - they write the csv files to the Google drive and the field teams sync the folders in their devices. What they registered yesterday becomes available to them today, and without our intervention. We can’t wait for Central to provide this, because it is such added value to the entire tool set, and crucial for our workflows. One of the csv files has the general external itemsets, which doesn’t change often.