ODK Central v2025.2: Search and filter Entities, Entity permissions, and more usable groups and repeats in Web Forms

What’s new

ODK Central v2025.2 is here it's all about Entities (and a little bit about Web Forms)!

:magnifying_glass_tilted_left: Search and filter Entities

Entities have been updated with additional search and filter features so you can more quickly find the data you are looking for!

:locked_with_key: Control Entity access with new permissions

Data Collectors and App Users now have the option to access either all Entities in a project or only the Entities they have created.

:ledger: Server upgrade is logged

When Central is upgraded, there is now an event in the System audit log labeled “Server Upgrade”. You can filter upgrade events to see when new features were added.

Web Forms

:star_struck: More usable groups and repeats

Groups and repeats no longer have indented vertical lines. Instead, they are in containers with reduced indenting to make forms more usable on devices.

:magnifying_glass_tilted_left: Select one with search fixed

We've improved filtering so that the choices shown are based on choice labels. The filtering is case-insensitive and matches any subset of the label text.

:glowing_star: See highlight for last ranked option

In previous releases, it was hard to know which item you just moved. Now, the last option is highlighted temporarily to provide feedback.

:thought_balloon: Use disabled selects & multi-line text

Form designers can now use disabled selects when a question is read-only. We’ve also added support for multiline appearance in the text question type intended for longer responses.

How to get these improvements?

If you are using Central on ODK Cloud, we'll be rolling out these updates in the coming weeks. If you are self-hosting Central, follow the upgrade instructions!

What’s next

Our next release will include creating Entities from repeats and changing Entity ownership. We’ll also be working on refreshing the login experience to allow for branding opportunities.

Web Forms will add more support for geospatial questions and improve selects with images. We'll also be providing some resources to help you build more usable web forms!

See more of what we have planned at https://getodk.org/roadmap.

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