Field Task

Archived!

FieldTask4 has been replaced with FieldTask5. Hence this repository has now been archived.

Overview

Field Task is an Android app that can be used for collecting data for Monitoring and Evaluation from outside the office including locations without data connectivity. It is part of the Smap framework for M&E and Case Management which means it can be used for digitilisation projects. Further details on installing and testing Field Task on an Android device can be found here. You will need to set up an account on the free hosted server to test the app.

Table of Contents

• Dependencies
• Setting up your development environment
• Branches
• Variants
• Incorporating the latest upstream changes
• Changes in the Field Task fork
• Acknowledgements

Dependencies

Most dependencies are managed using gradle, however some Field Task functionality requires a modified version of JavaRosa(https://github.com/smap-consulting/javarosa). You will need to add this to your development environment in order to access these features.

Setting up your development environment

1. Download and install Git if you don't have it already

2. Download and install Android Studio if you don't have it already

3. Fork the Field Task project (why and how to fork)

4. Clone your fork of the project locally. At the command line type "git clone" and then the url provided by git hub.

    git clone https://github.com/YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME/fieldTask4.git
   

5. The "main" branch is the default branch

6. Use Android Studio to import the project

7. Add Smap JavaRosa as a project in Android Studio

    Follow the readme instructions in the javarosa repository to build the latest production java rosa version. Currently tip of production branch.
    copy the generated jar file to fieldTask/collect_app/libs. You may need to create the libs folder
    The version of java rosa that you need is referenced in the application's build.gradle
   

8. Get a Google services json file

    Sign into the firebase console
    Add a project
    Select Android to add firebase to your Android app
    Specify the package as: org.smap.smapTask.android
    Register the app 
    Download the google-services.json file and place it in the fieldTask4/collect_app folder
   

9. Get a Google Maps API key. A credit card number is required however there a fairly significant number of requests available at no charge each month. Check how many map calls you expect to be using and the expected cost before signing up. Add this to your global gradle.properties file.

10. Enable Google Maps for your application. Your apk needs to be given access to the google maps API key that you have created.

    Goto the google developers console
    Click enable APIs and services
    Select Maps SDK for Android
    Select Manage
    Select Credentials
    Add the package name and sha-1 signing certificate for your app to the google maps API key that you created in the previous step
    

11. Create a Mapbox account. Select the "Pay-As-You-Go" plan. Like Google, Mapbox provides free API usage up to the monthly thresholds documented at https://www.mapbox.com/pricing. You can find your access token on your account page.

12. Edit or create collect_app/secrets.properties and set the GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY and the MAPBOX_ACCESS_TOKEN property to your access keys. You should end up with two lines that looks like this:

     GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY=AIzaSyA9C_...
     MAPBOX_ACCESS_TOKEN=pk.eyJ1IjoibmFwMjAwMCIsImEiOiJja...
    

13. Set the Active Build Variant for the collect_app module to standardDebug

14. Select run to view fieldTask in an emulator

Branches

• main - The latest Field Task code

Variants

The variant in the github repository that you will want to start with is "standard". This contains some resources and Java code to handle customisable processing around location change. Background location recording can be enabled on FieldTask and by default this is used only for geo fencing and the location data is not stored. The register function in the LocationRegister file can be modified to do additional processing of location changes if you need that.

Issues

• FieldTask Issues.
• General issues for Smap Server, Web Clients, Web Forms

Related Repositories

FieldTask is designed to work with Smap server, the code for which is included in other GitHub repositories. The complete list of repositories is shown in the table below.

Name	Github	Purpose
FieldTask	https://github.com/smap-consulting/fieldTask4	FieldTask
JavaRosa	https://github.com/smap-consulting/javarosa	FieldTask
SmapServer	https://github.com/smap-consulting/smapserver2	Back end Server code
WebForm	https://github.com/nap2000/webform	Browser client
SmapClient	https://github.com/nap2000/prop-smapserver	Administrative client
Documentation	https://github.com/nap2000/docs	Documentation

Downloads

• Server Downloads Page
• Server Administration Documentation

Acknowledgements

This project:

• includes the Android SDK from [MapBox] (https://www.mapbox.com/)
• forks the odkCollect Library of (http://opendatakit.org/)