Setting up a monitoring survey

Taking a survey of something, be it a water point, a tree, or a school, is usually a one-time event. You collect data, analyse the data, take action, and that’s it. But in many cases, you also want to go back at a later date, and do a follow-up: is this pump still working? Has the tree grown? Has that schools’ latrine been repaired? This is what we call monitoring: observing facts about something, some ‘entity’ (machine, pump, person, etc.), which has an identity and can be tracked over time. An identity is a set of attributes (id, serial number, name, etc.) that uniquely identify an entity.

The core idea of monitoring is to create ‘data points’, to which information about a data point can be added. Multiple forms can be added to a single survey, which together capture different aspects of a data point. One form is used to create a new data point, and the other forms are used to add additional information to an existing data point. Also see Monitoring - tracking things over time for the whole story on how to use monitoring.

Creating a monitoring survey A monitoring survey consists of a single survey, which has multiple forms inside. To create a monitoring survey, follow these steps:

To add multiple forms to a survey, you first need to enable monitoring on the survey. Check the checkbox ‘Enable monitoring features’. When this has been enabled, you can create multiple forms, as shown below. In addition, you need to select the form, which will be used to create new data points. By default, this is the first form that can be filled in. Other forms will just be able to update existing data points.

Create the forms you need. In the form that will be used to create new data points, there are two checkboxes, which are important.

The first one is Use as data point name, which is shown on free text questions. When this is checked, the answer to this question will become part of the ‘name’ of the data point. This will be shown in lists on the device, and can be used to search data points. By default, this is off. This should only be enabled for one or two questions, which will help to identify the data point, such as an id, or a name. Multiple values will be added together separated by a dash ‘-‘.

The second one is Use as data point location, which is shown on geolocation questions. When this is checked, the location captured by this question will be used as the main location of the data point. By default, this is turned on.

Be sure that the right form has been selected as registration form, in the settings of your survey.