REJECT mechanism on Central - Next steps?

Hi,

Central gives you the option of reviewing the submissions from the field. APPROVE is OK. But what happens to the HAS ISSUES and REJECTED entries? What are the next steps?

As an ideal flow, the data should be sent back to the enumerator with an alert that this data has issues and need to be fixed. The enumerator should fix and submit again. But in current design, I understand that it is difficult to adjust.

My idea is that at least an alert should be sent back to the enumerator that his submitted data ID 123 has been rejected (or has issues), and that he should fix the issue and submit it again. One enhancement can be that since he has a copy of the data in VIEW SENT FORMS, some code in the phone should help him copy all that already collected data into a new form. Or at least unlock only that specific form in VIEW SENT FORMS so that he could fix the issue and resend to the server.

Please note that I do know about ENTITIES framework (which is excellent I think), but this workflow may exist independent of entities as well (at least the enumerator notification part, since his phone would be talking to the server many times while doing more submissions).

Happy to hear thoughts.

Regards,
Saad

The states are intentionally open-ended so that they can be used in any number of workflows.

Rejected is typically used to mark submissions that should not be part of analysis. In some projects, those might be test submissions. In others, those might be submissions from participants eventually deemed ineligible.

Has issues is typically used to mark submissions that need some additional discussion with a data collector. For now, this needs to happen out of ODK. Common workflows we see involve giving the data collector a direct call, sending WhatsApp messages, or consulting with someone else who may be able to address the issues identified.

We know there's a desire to give data collectors a way to update submissions (and this came up briefly in learnings from form finalization research). We don't have immediate plans to take it on but it is something we have done some exploration around.

1 Like