Filling, saving and sending on Joripo Collect

The home screen

Everything starts from the home screen, which is drawn from what the phone holds and works offline: who is signed in, the workspace and server, Sync (check the server's forms and cases, then send everything waiting), and a status line saying when the server was last reached. Below are what needs attention (announcements, recovered interviews, forms not sent, updates ready) and the actions: Manage cases (when the workspace has a case list), Fill blank form, Drafts, Send finalized forms, Get blank forms, Sent forms and Delete forms. Settings is the gear.

Getting forms and updates

Get blank forms lists every form on the server with its state, ticks what needs downloading, and shows progress per form and per file. Files the phone already has are not downloaded again, and a file that fails is tried three times, keeping what arrived for Try again.

The app checks for new versions when it opens (as the server's device configuration says) and on Sync. A newer version is offered as an update. The same version with different contents (a recompiled form, a new preload file or image) is offered too, as Republished. An older version on the server is flagged and never applied by itself.

Filling a form

The form runs on the same engine as the tester: one screen at a time, answers checked on Next (or, if the person prefers, only when finalizing), repeats, relevance and languages. Swipe left for next and right for previous, unless the server turns swiping off. Date and time questions open on now, the location screen waits for an accurate reading, and photos, audio and signatures use the phone's camera and microphone.

• Save draft keeps the interview to finish later; the app also saves by itself a couple of seconds after each answer and when it is interrupted (a call, the camera). An interview the phone closed appears under Recovered interviews.
• Leaving asks: Save draft and leave, Leave without saving, or Keep filling.
• Start over opens a blank form of the same version.
• Timers (calculate_here, duration()) carry on correctly when a draft is resumed: the time a draft sat closed is not counted as interview time.

A draft started on one version stays on that version. When a newer version arrives, Move to version N copies the draft onto it, lists the answers it could not carry, and keeps the original as a backup until the moved form is sent.

Finalizing and sending

Finalize puts the form under Send finalized forms, ready to go, for the workspace and the definition it was started on.

• Forms are sent by themselves when there is a connection, even with the app closed, as the server's auto-send setting says: always, on Wi-Fi only, or only when someone taps Send.
• A form leaves the phone only when the server answers that it was received. Until then it is retried with increasing waits; Not sent shows each form's reason (the server's own message when it refused).
• Send, Send selected and Send all send at once. Edit takes a finalized form back to the drafts with the same instance ID; Delete needs the word typed, and is logged on the phone.
• Sent forms keeps sent forms for a while, then clears them, as the device configuration says.

Several people on one phone

Each finalized form records who finalized it and in which workspace, and goes out with that person's key. On a shared phone one enumerator's forms are never sent under another's account; the forms of someone who signed out or was revoked are held until they are approved again, then sent.

A lost or stolen phone: on the Collect tab choose Revoke and erase. Its keys stop at once, and the next time it connects it deletes everything Joripo Collect keeps on it, forms not yet sent included. A plain Revoke keeps the unsent forms on the phone (locked) until it is approved again, and removes what the server already has.

When a phone cannot reach the server for weeks

If a phone has been out of coverage for weeks, has lost its server address, or is about to be wiped, its forms can still reach the server by hand:

1. On the phone, Settings › Backups and export › Export forms to a file writes a .joripo file. It holds only the forms of the workspace and the person using the phone, and it is locked with a passphrase the enumerator chooses (at least 8 characters). Pass the passphrase on separately, never with the file. (Joripo Collect 2.3 and older write an unlocked .zip.)
2. Bring the file to the console. A manager opens Import from a phone on the workspace's data page, uploads it and types the passphrase.
3. Every form in it is checked and stored as if the phone had sent it, and the quality checks run. A form the server already has (the same KEY) is left as it is, so importing the same file twice is safe; the page says what was added, what was already there and what could not be read.

Phone settings

The person chooses their own text size and spacing, and when answers are checked. What the server decides (when forms are sent, update checks, swiping, the date default, photo size, the app lock, deleting answers after sending) comes from the server's device configuration, set by its maintainer. The maintainer can let phones change some of these; see Server settings.