Disable submitting new data after assignment date

[janagombitova]

Context

We aim to support large organisations in making the most out of their data. This means making it easy to capture, understand and act on data. Ensuring data collections is a smooth process is one of the steps. Data collection, especially on a large scale is a costly process involving many enumerators and people overviewing it. It is important it is easy to set up, coordinate and control as in the end, it determines the lessons one gets out of the dataset.

With large organisations and large data collection projects the more structure there is, the better quality data is produced, less effort is needed in coordination, more trust is created.

Current status quo

Today data collection is managed via assignments in Flow. Salim decides which survey form is to be used, which devices will collect the data, for which data points and when.

The assignment date

What the assignment date does today is defining

• when the device automatically receives the survey forms and their most recent versions
• when the enumerator can download data points to the device

What the assignment date does NOT do today is defining

• when data can be submitted --> if the assignment did not start or has expired, it does not matter, enumerators can still submit data
• an assignment that expired does not affect the form and data on the device. They remain there regardless of the life of the assignment.

Opportunity 


The opportunity is to enforce the understanding of an assignment as a task and to clarify the role of dates.

User feedback & problems

We often get questions as

• If after the date of the assignment expired will you still be able to submit data
• Why do I still get data coming in even though the date has passed
• What does the date do
• What happens after the assignment ended? (or is a device is removed from an assignment)
• Does data get automatically removed from the device after the date has expired? Does the form?
• Does the data or the form get removed from the device automatically once I remove the device from an assignment? (Note: this might need a separate issue)

Why do we have this issue? What are we trying to solve? 


When researching the needs around supporting monitoring better with assignments we had to answer a core question - What are assignments?. An assignment as a task what means that an assignment is something Salim gives to Al to do. So Al is given an assignment that he needs to complete. This assignment holds survey forms, data points and has a timeframe of completion. It has its rules. It holds What forms Al has to collect data for, Which data points (if that applies) he needs to update, When must he do this work. More here https://github.com/akvo/akvo-flow/issues/2796#issuecomment-412828130

By understanding assignments as a task it becomes clear that the role of the assignment date has been confusing and incomplete.

The idea 


The idea is to enforce the role of the date and what happens at the end of an assignment.

Role of the start date

Role of the end date

• Should one still be able to submit data once the end date has passed? No.
• Should data that is submitted still sync after the expiration date? Yes.
• What to do with draft (saved) submissions? Should we allow to complete those if the date has passed?
• How will we inform the enumerator on the app that submitting data to this form will not be possible in XYZ timeframe? is no longer possible because the assignment expired? (What to do if one form was assigned to Al in two or more assignments with different dates?)
• How will we inform on the online workspace that some of the assignments have expired?
• Should form and data still remain on the device after the expiration date has passed?

Extra

• Should the assignment date be visible in the app?
• Bringing a strong role to the date creates clarity in expectations but it also creates more rigidness in the assignment set up. Partners will have to pay more attention to planning. Thus if the date is prolonged it needs to be reflected in the behaviour of the app.

How will this benefit the users?

• better manage the data collection and ensure no data comes in too late. This way analysis can start at a strict point in time and the data analyst knows she has all the data
• depending on how strict we implement this (remove all the related forms and data from devices after the date has passed) we can help users control who has what data and thus ensure more data security
• less confusion on what is a rule and what is not thus fewer support tickets around assignments

How will this benefit Akvo?


• more tools in the hands of organisations that prefer to control activities and thus making the product more interesting for large organisations (knowing you can control even more from afar is quite an appealing message)

Next steps 


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