Kobotoolbox integration for creation of new surveys

[ghachey]

The EMIS Education Survey Tool currently supports two hard code surveys (School Accreditation and a comprehensive WASH survey). Adding new surveys requires the assistance of developers typically done by preparing a structured XML file of the survey form. While this approach as served the needs so far, it would be desirable to be able to design our own surveys and load them in the app preferably through the firebase configuration. The preferred approach is to build upon the work of an existing open source tool used around the world for data collection. The tool is called Kobotoolbox (https://www.kobotoolbox.org/) which builds upon the open data kit standard. Using Kobotoolbox one can design surveys for data entry using a WYSIWYG (simple what you see is what you get graphical user interface) and then provide the surveys online (and offline) for data entry. But the surveys can also be exported as an XML definition following a standard convention like ODK (Open Data Kit). Provided we follow a few specific rules such as including fields for school name/id, period, createDateTime, createUser, etc. we should be able to produce a survey in Kobotoolbox, use the resulting XML files, load it into the firebase configuration and it would then become available in the Education Survey Tool installed on the tablet without a new build.

The newly deployed XML survey would then be available for use exactly as the current surveys are supporting all the same features (cloud syncing/syncing monitoring, progress bar monitor by category/group, etc.) The advantage of this approach vs simply using the online version of the created survey in Kobotoolbox is the tight integration with the EMIS backend including the preview and approval process.

[ghachey]

This could change but good enough for now. Green highest priority, followed by blue and then purple.

[maratomega]

Hi @ghachey correct me if I'm wrong, please. You would like to implement even the purple types of QA, correct? But the highest priority for the implementation are "green" ones

[ghachey]

@maratomega yes, colors merely show the priority.