ODK Collect Data Recovery

Support
1

Hey all,

I have been using ODK Collect on Android tablets for the past few months in
the field and had a few quick question about data recovery.

  1. We have been experiencing an issue with responses being lost from a form
    if it does not properly finalize. We have a longer survey that requires
    almost all of the questions to be answered, but one field officer was
    skipping a question to come back to it later using the "Go to Prompt"
    function, but forgot to return in one instance. She proceeded to go to the
    final page of the form, and checked Mark Form as Finalized, then Save Form
    and Exit. The form didn't finalize itself as it wasn't fully completed,
    but in doing so it lost all subsequent data after the last save point on
    the form prior to exiting the form. Even though it reported as saved when
    she clicked "Save Form and Exit", the final section was not recorded. Only
    data up until the previous save point was stored. Can anyone explain why
    this is happening, as opposed to saving all of the data and simply not
    finalizing the form?

  2. Is there any built in backup system within ODK Collect that stores the
    cached .xml files apart form the instances folder? I have looked into the
    .cache folder, but all of the files are in .SAVE format -- is there anyway
    to convert that to the .xml output or at least open it in a text editor to
    manually re-enter it? We had a situation where a survey was completed by a
    Field Officer but is missing from both the ODK Collect "Saved Forms" menu
    as well as the "instances" folder on the tablet device. As of now it is
    looking like we will have to re-survey that individual (not a big deal
    since it is just one person), but if anyone know of an internal backup or
    autosave, please let me know to avoid this problem.

Best,
James

2

(1) This is most likely dependent upon your specific form and is likely
points to a flaw in your relevant condition for the grouping of questions
whose values were lost. This behavior is usually caused by a relevant
condition that skips an entire grouping of questions based upon an answer
to an earlier value. I suspect the surveyor may have gone to one such
earlier question and changed its setting to cause the grouping to become
not relevant. In that case, the answers to this grouping of questions would
not be written out to the file, and would therefore disappear as you
describe. I don't believe it is possible to do this simply by skipping
over a required value and not returning to it (so I suspect the steps to
reproduce the problem are not accurate).

(2) The .xml.save files are identical in structure to the xml files stored
in the instances directory. You can trick ODK Collect into recovering from
a .xml.save file by opening ODK Collect, opening a new blank form, saving
it, exiting ODK Collect, then copying the .xml.save file on top of the
instances/instancename/instancename.xml file that was just created. The
next time you open that saved instance, you will see the data that was in
the .xml.save file.

Mitch

··· On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 9:53 AM, James Vancel wrote:

Hey all,

I have been using ODK Collect on Android tablets for the past few months
in the field and had a few quick question about data recovery.

  1. We have been experiencing an issue with responses being lost from a
    form if it does not properly finalize. We have a longer survey that
    requires almost all of the questions to be answered, but one field officer
    was skipping a question to come back to it later using the "Go to Prompt"
    function, but forgot to return in one instance. She proceeded to go to the
    final page of the form, and checked Mark Form as Finalized, then Save Form
    and Exit. The form didn't finalize itself as it wasn't fully completed,
    but in doing so it lost all subsequent data after the last save point on
    the form prior to exiting the form. Even though it reported as saved when
    she clicked "Save Form and Exit", the final section was not recorded. Only
    data up until the previous save point was stored. Can anyone explain why
    this is happening, as opposed to saving all of the data and simply not
    finalizing the form?

  2. Is there any built in backup system within ODK Collect that stores the
    cached .xml files apart form the instances folder? I have looked into the
    .cache folder, but all of the files are in .SAVE format -- is there anyway
    to convert that to the .xml output or at least open it in a text editor to
    manually re-enter it? We had a situation where a survey was completed by a
    Field Officer but is missing from both the ODK Collect "Saved Forms" menu
    as well as the "instances" folder on the tablet device. As of now it is
    looking like we will have to re-survey that individual (not a big deal
    since it is just one person), but if anyone know of an internal backup or
    autosave, please let me know to avoid this problem.

Best,
James

--
Post: opendatakit@googlegroups.com
Unsubscribe: opendatakit+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
Options: http://groups.google.com/group/opendatakit?hl=en

--
Mitch Sundt
Software Engineer
University of Washington
mitchellsundt@gmail.com

3

Alternatively, if you have just one such .xml.save file, if you place it in
the /odk/.cache directory of the device and then choose Fill Blank Form, it
should find and use the contents of that .xml.save file to prepopulate the
blank form.

··· On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 11:24 AM, Mitch S wrote:

(1) This is most likely dependent upon your specific form and is likely
points to a flaw in your relevant condition for the grouping of questions
whose values were lost. This behavior is usually caused by a relevant
condition that skips an entire grouping of questions based upon an answer
to an earlier value. I suspect the surveyor may have gone to one such
earlier question and changed its setting to cause the grouping to become
not relevant. In that case, the answers to this grouping of questions would
not be written out to the file, and would therefore disappear as you
describe. I don't believe it is possible to do this simply by skipping
over a required value and not returning to it (so I suspect the steps to
reproduce the problem are not accurate).

(2) The .xml.save files are identical in structure to the xml files stored
in the instances directory. You can trick ODK Collect into recovering from
a .xml.save file by opening ODK Collect, opening a new blank form, saving
it, exiting ODK Collect, then copying the .xml.save file on top of the
instances/instancename/instancename.xml file that was just created. The
next time you open that saved instance, you will see the data that was in
the .xml.save file.

Mitch

On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 9:53 AM, James Vancel james.h.vancel@gmail.comwrote:

Hey all,

I have been using ODK Collect on Android tablets for the past few months
in the field and had a few quick question about data recovery.

  1. We have been experiencing an issue with responses being lost from a
    form if it does not properly finalize. We have a longer survey that
    requires almost all of the questions to be answered, but one field officer
    was skipping a question to come back to it later using the "Go to Prompt"
    function, but forgot to return in one instance. She proceeded to go to the
    final page of the form, and checked Mark Form as Finalized, then Save Form
    and Exit. The form didn't finalize itself as it wasn't fully completed,
    but in doing so it lost all subsequent data after the last save point on
    the form prior to exiting the form. Even though it reported as saved when
    she clicked "Save Form and Exit", the final section was not recorded. Only
    data up until the previous save point was stored. Can anyone explain why
    this is happening, as opposed to saving all of the data and simply not
    finalizing the form?

  2. Is there any built in backup system within ODK Collect that stores the
    cached .xml files apart form the instances folder? I have looked into the
    .cache folder, but all of the files are in .SAVE format -- is there anyway
    to convert that to the .xml output or at least open it in a text editor to
    manually re-enter it? We had a situation where a survey was completed by a
    Field Officer but is missing from both the ODK Collect "Saved Forms" menu
    as well as the "instances" folder on the tablet device. As of now it is
    looking like we will have to re-survey that individual (not a big deal
    since it is just one person), but if anyone know of an internal backup or
    autosave, please let me know to avoid this problem.

Best,
James

--
Post: opendatakit@googlegroups.com
Unsubscribe: opendatakit+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
Options: http://groups.google.com/group/opendatakit?hl=en

--
Mitch Sundt
Software Engineer
University of Washington
mitchellsundt@gmail.com

--
Mitch Sundt
Software Engineer
University of Washington
mitchellsundt@gmail.com

4

Alternatively, if you have just one such .xml.save file, if you place it in the /odk/.cache directory of the device and then choose Fill Blank Form, it should find and use the contents of that .xml.save file to prepopulate the blank form.

(1) This is most likely dependent upon your specific form and is likely points to a flaw in your relevant condition for the grouping of questions whose values were lost. This behavior is usually caused by a relevant condition that skips an entire grouping of questions based upon an answer to an earlier value. I suspect the surveyor may have gone to one such earlier question and changed its setting to cause the grouping to become not relevant. In that case, the answers to this grouping of questions would not be written out to the file, and would therefore disappear as you describe. I don't believe it is possible to do this simply by skipping over a required value and not returning to it (so I suspect the steps to reproduce the problem are not accurate).

(2) The .xml.save files are identical in structure to the xml files stored in the instances directory. You can trick ODK Collect into recovering from a .xml.save file by opening ODK Collect, opening a new blank form, saving it, exiting ODK Collect, then copying the .xml.save file on top of the instances/instancename/instancename.xml file that was just created. The next time you open that saved instance, you will see the data that was in the .xml.save file.

Mitch

Hey all,

I have been using ODK Collect on Android tablets for the past few months in the field and had a few quick question about data recovery.

  1. We have been experiencing an issue with responses being lost from a form if it does not properly finalize. We have a longer survey that requires almost all of the questions to be answered, but one field officer was skipping a question to come back to it later using the "Go to Prompt" function, but forgot to return in one instance. She proceeded to go to the final page of the form, and checked Mark Form as Finalized, then Save Form and Exit. The form didn't finalize itself as it wasn't fully completed, but in doing so it lost all subsequent data after the last save point on the form prior to exiting the form. Even though it reported as saved when she clicked "Save Form and Exit", the final section was not recorded. Only data up until the previous save point was stored. Can anyone explain why this is happening, as opposed to saving all of the data and simply not finalizing the form?

  2. Is there any built in backup system within ODK Collect that stores the cached .xml files apart form the instances folder? I have looked into the .cache folder, but all of the files are in .SAVE format -- is there anyway to convert that to the .xml output or at least open it in a text editor to manually re-enter it? We had a situation where a survey was completed by a Field Officer but is missing from both the ODK Collect "Saved Forms" menu as well as the "instances" folder on the tablet device. As of now it is looking like we will have to re-survey that individual (not a big deal since it is just one person), but if anyone know of an internal backup or autosave, please let me know to avoid this problem.

Best,
James

--

Post: opend...@googlegroups.com

Unsubscribe: opendatakit...@googlegroups.com

Options: http://groups.google.com/group/opendatakit?hl=en

--
Mitch Sundt
Software Engineer
University of Washington
mitche...@gmail.com

--
Mitch Sundt
Software Engineer
University of Washington
mitche...@gmail.com

placed a saved .xml file but it doesn't pre-populate a blank odk form

··· On Wednesday, October 10, 2012 at 9:26:31 PM UTC+3, Mitch Sundt wrote: > On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 11:24 AM, Mitch S wrote: > On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 9:53 AM, James Vancel wrote:
5

Hi there,

You responded to a very old thread, so it's not clear what you are asking.

Can you please write a new post/thread describing the high-level
problem you are trying to solve, the steps that you've taken, and the
versions of Collect you are using?

Thanks,

Yaw

··· On Sat, May 13, 2017 at 3:37 PM, wrote: > On Wednesday, October 10, 2012 at 9:26:31 PM UTC+3, Mitch Sundt wrote: >> Alternatively, if you have just one such .xml.save file, if you place it in the /odk/.cache directory of the device and then choose Fill Blank Form, it should find and use the contents of that .xml.save file to prepopulate the blank form. >> >> >> >> On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 11:24 AM, Mitch S wrote: >> >> (1) This is most likely dependent upon your specific form and is likely points to a flaw in your relevant condition for the grouping of questions whose values were lost. This behavior is usually caused by a relevant condition that skips an entire grouping of questions based upon an answer to an earlier value. I suspect the surveyor may have gone to one such earlier question and changed its setting to cause the grouping to become not relevant. In that case, the answers to this grouping of questions would not be written out to the file, and would therefore disappear as you describe. I don't believe it is possible to do this simply by skipping over a required value and not returning to it (so I suspect the steps to reproduce the problem are not accurate). >> >> >> >> (2) The .xml.save files are identical in structure to the xml files stored in the instances directory. You can trick ODK Collect into recovering from a .xml.save file by opening ODK Collect, opening a new blank form, saving it, exiting ODK Collect, then copying the .xml.save file on top of the instances/instancename/instancename.xml file that was just created. The next time you open that saved instance, you will see the data that was in the .xml.save file. >> >> >> >> Mitch >> >> >> >> >> On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 9:53 AM, James Vancel wrote: >> >> >> Hey all, >> >> >> I have been using ODK Collect on Android tablets for the past few months in the field and had a few quick question about data recovery. >> >> >> 1) We have been experiencing an issue with responses being lost from a form if it does not properly finalize. We have a longer survey that requires almost all of the questions to be answered, but one field officer was skipping a question to come back to it later using the "Go to Prompt" function, but forgot to return in one instance. She proceeded to go to the final page of the form, and checked Mark Form as Finalized, then Save Form and Exit. The form didn't finalize itself as it wasn't fully completed, but in doing so it lost all subsequent data after the last save point on the form prior to exiting the form. Even though it reported as saved when she clicked "Save Form and Exit", the final section was not recorded. Only data up until the previous save point was stored. Can anyone explain why this is happening, as opposed to saving all of the data and simply not finalizing the form? >> >> >> >> >> 2) Is there any built in backup system within ODK Collect that stores the cached .xml files apart form the instances folder? I have looked into the .cache folder, but all of the files are in .SAVE format -- is there anyway to convert that to the .xml output or at least open it in a text editor to manually re-enter it? We had a situation where a survey was completed by a Field Officer but is missing from both the ODK Collect "Saved Forms" menu as well as the "instances" folder on the tablet device. As of now it is looking like we will have to re-survey that individual (not a big deal since it is just one person), but if anyone know of an internal backup or autosave, please let me know to avoid this problem. >> >> >> >> >> Best, >> James >> >> >> >> >> -- >> >> Post: opend...@googlegroups.com >> >> Unsubscribe: opendatakit...@googlegroups.com >> >> Options: http://groups.google.com/group/opendatakit?hl=en >> >> >> >> >> -- >> Mitch Sundt >> Software Engineer >> University of Washington >> mitche...@gmail.com >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> Mitch Sundt >> Software Engineer >> University of Washington >> mitche...@gmail.com > > placed a saved .xml file but it doesn't pre-populate a blank odk form > > -- > -- > Post: opendatakit@googlegroups.com > Unsubscribe: opendatakit+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com > Options: http://groups.google.com/group/opendatakit?hl=en > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ODK Community" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to opendatakit+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.