Tool to create report document from survey before submitting?

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05-03-2018 10:07 AM
AndrewRyan3
New Contributor III

We have field staff collecting data with laptops, and one of the most requested features is the ability to view all of the question responses in an easy-to-read word document. Since the information is all saved in the autosave.json file, it should be possible for someone to create a tool to do this. With repeats in the form, it would be so nice to be able to evaluate everything in a list before the data is submitted to the webservice.

Has anyone else tried creating such a thing? I would love some feedback on ideas for how you would go about doing this. My initial idea is to get it into word, and build some type of macro around reformatting the json. I am not experienced with macros at all, and foresee many long days ahead... Alternatively, writing something in python would be easier for my experience, but either way parsing json is going to be totally new for me.

Thanks for ideas and discussion.

Andrew

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1 Reply
by Anonymous User
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Hi Andrew,

It is not currently possible to print a copy of the survey to a file (Word, PDF or image format) directly from within the app before submitting. We do have an enhancement request for this feature and I have updated it with your comments.

As you mention there could be others ways to do this by formatting the json, however I am not aware of any other users that have successfully done so on the device before submission.

This may not help, but not sure if you are aware that we are currently working on a new feature to support Webhooks. While the Webhook will only be sent on submission, not before, we do see scenarios where it could be used to enable printing on the device of a report (Word/PDF etc), as after submitting the record, the report gets generated online, and then gets sent back to the user via email as an attachment. Webhooks is currently in beta and will be released with further improvements in a coming release and we are also making further improvements to the Reporting beta functionality available on the website. You can find our more information on both of these via the Blogs and Early Adopter Community.

Phil.