Settings

The Settings category holds items you usually set up for the first time using your Akvo Flow app to customise your data collection experience. Every time you open or update the app these settings are remembered.

Keep screen on during form input

If turned on, your screen will not lock when working with the Flow app. Depending on your device settings your device might lock after a few seconds. When you are capturing data it might be cumbersome to always have to unlock your device to input a new answer. With this setting the Flow app will make sure your screen is always on when working with Flow.

Enable usage of mobile data

When capturing data in remote areas or in the field, you usually do not have wifi connection available. You can capture data offline, or decide to have your submitted forms sync to your Flow instance immediately using your mobile data. Keep in mind that by enabling usage of mobile data you might create extra costs on your data bundle.

Image size

If you are collecting photos with your data, you can decide the size of the photo. By default we use the minimum size (320x240px). This is to ensure data upload does not fail in areas with low connectivity and the data usage is not too high. There are three possible sizes to choose from.

Data

Send submitted data points to Flow instance After you submit your data, the data point is in the status "exported". This means that your responses are saved but did not fully sync to your Flow instance. This may be cause by the size of the responses, or speed of the internet connection. In result your data is not yet fully available on Flow.

To trigger your responses to fully reach Flow, click on this option and it will re-start the process of sending the data. Check the list of data points and you should see that all submissions are now synced, indicated by the green icon.

Delete collected data and images

This option deletes all data collected on your device including all images and videos. This is helpful is you are starting a new data collection exercise and want to create space on your device. Make sure all the data is fully synced to your Flow instance before deleting.

Delete everything

If you want to start fresh, with new surveys and no data or if you want to change the user and device ID all in one go, this is the option for you. With delete everything you get a fresh new Flow app. Make sure all the data is fully synced to your Flow instance before deleting.

Download form using form ID

You can either assign a form to a device using an assignment, when the form is automatically synced to your device, or you can download a form manually. To do so, you need to know the administrator password and the form ID, that is shown in the survey editor on Flow's online workspace. Here you can learn more on how to download a form using the form ID.

Reload all surveys

Often surveys forms are changed and improved to match the project needs or sometimes to simply improve the questions. To make sure you always have the latest version of your survey forms on your device, you can close and reopen the app or Reload all surveys. This action will check all the forms you have on your device and update their versions. Also it will check if new forms are assigned to you and add them to your device. However, by reloading all surveys, the surveys you now have on your device will first be deleted and then re-downloaded again make sure you have all data submitted before you run this action.

Configuration

GPS fixes

Before any data collection or when travelling large distances, it is good to make sure your GPS is calibrated. This ensures that all location answers, geographic shapes, or photo geotags are captured with the best possible accuracy. To calibrate your GPS you can select this option. It will open a GPS calibration app, if installed on your device. To learn more about GPS calibration, check this article.

Available storage

Before each data collection exercise you want to make sure you have enough space available on your device to be able to capture all the data, images, videos, etc. that you need. Here you can learn more on how to check how much space you still have available on your device.

Information

Device identifier When starting working with your Flow app, you must set a user name and a device ID. Here you can check what the Device ID for this device is.

If you want to change the Device ID, you need to first Delete everything.

Instance name

Each Akvo Flow app communicated with a specific Akvo Flow instance that we have created for you and your organisation. This instance has a distinct url (xxx.akvoflow.org) and you app makes sure you only receive surveys from this Flow instance and that your data is only synced to it.

Sometimes you might have collected data for different organisations. In these cases you always need to install the app from the right instance. To make sure you are working with the Flow app connected to the right instance, check the url here.