00:00:04 Introduction

All right, good afternoon everyone and welcome to this webinar. I'm Fayrouz Haddad and I'm working in marketing and Communications in ActivityInfo. I see familiar names and new names as well and I hope you are all very well. Before we start, I'd like to quickly mention that we have another webinar coming up on October 1st at 4:00 Central European Summer Time which will focus on how ActivityInfo can be used for case management. Also, in the following months, we will host longer online courses on ActivityInfo for intermediate and beginner users. You can learn more about the courses and register yourself or your team on our website. During the webinar, you can ask your questions using the question box and you can click on the hand icon to request to use the microphone to ask your questions live.

00:00:59 Importing questionnaires overview

Today's webinar is about importing long questionnaires in ActivityInfo. We will take a look at how we can translate any questions to ActivityInfo fields, and how we can prepare a spreadsheet with as many questions as we need. Then we will see how the spreadsheet can be imported to ActivityInfo so as to create a form in ActivityInfo. The nice thing about importing the spreadsheets is that you can create very long forms much more quickly than simply designing them.

The first thing that we will look at is the necessary headers and cells that need to be filled in for a questionnaire to take its form in ActivityInfo. Then we will see how we can customize further each question, making it required or a key, for example. In the third part, we will see how we can add relevance and validation rules to our fields and how to add formulas for calculations. In the final part, we will see how we can connect the questionnaire, which is going to be a form in ActivityInfo, to other forms which are already available in ActivityInfo.

00:02:11 Designing vs. importing forms

So how can a questionnaire come to life in ActivityInfo? As you know, you can directly design a form. This means that you can add the form and you can start adding fields for its questions. You can also duplicate an existing form and make changes to the copy to create a new similar form.

The way we are looking at today, which is by importing the questions from a spreadsheet, is particularly useful in some specific cases. For example, when we have the questions already available somewhere online, so we can quickly copy and paste them in the cells of our spreadsheets, or when we work with very long questionnaires with too many questions and we want to have a quick overview of all the questions at a glance.

To start, we have to take a look at our questionnaire and start examining every question. This is a key step. As soon as we know what kind of questions we have in front of us, we can translate them to fields in ActivityInfo. For example, if you have a question that is open-ended, you might need a text field, or if you're asking about an indicator, you need a quantity field. If your respondents need to select from a list of predefined questions, then use a selection field or a reference field.

Respectively, when asking for geography-related information, you can use a geopoint field. When asking for information related to time periods, you might need to use a date, month, week, or fortnight field. If you want users to provide additional documents or images, you will need an attachment field. You can use our user manual to view all fields that we have available in ActivityInfo.

00:04:50 Setting up the spreadsheet

In our spreadsheet, we need to call each field with a specific name. First of all, we need to add the headers. These need to be added as they are, and they will help us save the form. Underneath each header, we will start adding the necessary information to create the form. Not all cells need to be filled in; most of them are optional. The required ones are the columns of 'field type', which defines what kind of field we will use; the 'field name', which is the actual question; and the 'choice', but only when we are using a selection field. If you omit the headers of optional fields, you will still be able to upload the questions.

This is how a simple questionnaire will look. Note that we repeat the question for as many options as are available for the selection fields.

00:06:40 Customizing field properties

Let's see now how we can add more properties to our form. Once again, we need to understand our questions and see how these can be translated in ActivityInfo. Does your question need a description? Is an answer required? Do you need to get unique replies here, called 'records', based on one or more fields? Do you need to define units for your indicators? In the user manual, you can view all the available properties for every field in ActivityInfo.

In our spreadsheet, we will work with the columns: field description, required, key, and units. In the field description, you can just type the description you want for every question. If you want to make a field required or a key, you can add 'true', and if not, you can add 'false'. In the units, simply type the unit you want to use, but note that this should only be filled for quantity field types.

00:08:16 Using formulas

The next part we are going to look at is using formulas. By adding formulas to our spreadsheet, we make the spreadsheet more interactive. We can define when a question will appear to the user or when it can be counted as valid, and we can automate some calculations in our form. Once again, you need to take a good look at your questionnaire and decide if and when formulas are needed.

You can ask yourself this question to make it easier: if the question is not relevant to all, a relevance rule can be used to show the question only when a specification is fulfilled. If there are restrictions for accepted answers, you can add validation rules to define specific conditions for accepting an answer. If there is a need for quick analysis, you can add calculated fields in your spreadsheet. Please note that to make it easier to use each field in formulas, you must assign a code to the fields you want to use. The code can be as simple as a letter or more letters, without spaces in between them.

Here's how a formula for a validation condition would look like: we added codes to both fields and then we simply wrote the formula in the cell that corresponds to the question where we want the validation rule to apply.

00:10:36 Relevance rules and calculations

Here is how a formula for a relevance condition would look like. Again, we added codes to both fields that we're going to use, and then we simply wrote the formula in the cell that corresponds to the question where we want the rule to apply. The relevance rule here would work in this way: the multiple select question 'Please select all symptoms' will only appear if the answer to the single-select question 'Was the individual sick?' is 'Yes'.

Finally, here's how a calculated field would look. Note that the field type is now 'calculated' and the formula is added in the formula column.

00:12:09 Reference fields

Moving on to the last part of the presentation. In ActivityInfo, you can link forms to one another. This allows data entry users to select an answer in a form from a list of options that appears in another form. So for example, you might have in Form A a list of locations, then in Form B, you can refer to this list of locations. So a user can select one of these locations from a drop-down list.

When you want to reference a form in your spreadsheet, you need to have first added that form in ActivityInfo. You can either design that form or import the questionnaire using this method that we are discussing today. In any case, the form must already exist in ActivityInfo. To reference the form, you need to obtain the ID of the form. To do that, simply navigate to the Table View of that form and copy it from the URL.

In this example, we want to reference this list of programs in the questionnaire we are creating in our spreadsheet. For this reason, we will copy the code of the form that corresponds to this list, and we will paste it in the 'reference form' column on our spreadsheet. Of course, note that we added a field type 'reference' to create the reference field.

00:13:45 Importing the spreadsheet

Okay, now that we have seen all the types of questions, let's see how the full spreadsheet looks like and how it can be imported into ActivityInfo. We will copy all the cells from our spreadsheet and add a new form in ActivityInfo.

As you see, we have the headers, and we have included everything that we've seen today. I'm going to select everything, copy, and go to ActivityInfo. Add the form, give it a name, click on 'Add field' and here select 'Paste fields' then 'Field list from spreadsheet'. Here, I'm going to paste all the fields and click on 'Add fields'. As you can see, the questionnaire is formed. I will save the form, and we're ready.

In the schema, you can see that we have added relevance conditions, a reference form, validation conditions, choices—everything that we have discussed today. The reference form, remember that it still exists in ActivityInfo. This is a form that we can find in ActivityInfo in my databases because I designed it beforehand.

00:18:02 Q&A: Relevance rule syntax

In this example, we want to add the relevance rule for a field, for the multi-select. So we want this multi-select field to appear to our users only when the answer is 'Yes' to the previous answer. So we add the field code to the single-select answer, which is the same for both questions, and then, in the relevance rule of the multi-select field, we add the code, a dot, and the answer from the two choices that we want to use as a condition. So this means that whenever the reply to this question is 'Yes', the question 'Please select all symptoms' will appear.

For more formulas and how we can use these both in relevance rules and validation rules, we have a very nice webinar from the past and a blog post you can follow where you can see how exactly you can add validation rules with formulas. So for example, you can make something more advanced.

00:20:14 Exporting fields

Another thing you can do after you have imported the form in this way is that you can export the fields. So, once you export the fields, you will have this spreadsheet in your hands, and you can apply more changes and then create a different form. Of course, you can also add all the formulas or the rules, relevance rules or validation rules, on the form you already created, and then export it.

So for example, this formula here could be different because you would like to use a different field or you would like to calculate something different. If you make the change and you click 'Done' and save the form, then you can export it and have a different spreadsheet.

00:24:25 Closing

All right, I see there are no other questions. So I would like to thank you all for attending this quick webinar today. Please keep in mind our online courses and our next webinar, and we will be in touch for upcoming webinars and courses. Thank you very much. I will share the webinar and the materials and we will most probably write a blog post about it so you can follow along. Goodbye. Everybody have a good evening.