The API leverages Microsoft ADO .NET Data Services which currently supports exchanging entities using either JSON or ATOM (an XML-based feed format). Furthermore the API supports a rich query interface that supports filtering, sorting and query expansion. To find out more about the API and the functionality it supports, please refer to the Mobile Researcher API guide.

To illustrate the capability of leveraging the API from a platform other than the one it is developed and hosted on, we have built a simple Java wrapper which is available here. The wrapper supports querying the API for submissions and their associated responses. In time we will add further samples developed in other languages.

If you would like to find out more about the Mobile Researcher API or have any problems accessing it please feel free to send us an email at support@mobileresearcher.com.

Resources:

Mobile Researcher API Guide – Download
Java Wrapper – Download

Breadcrumb

A Breadcrumb is a common navigational element used on many websites to allow users to orientate themselves and quickly move from one place to another with relatively few clicks. The term originates from the age-old fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel who leave breadcrumbs behind them in the hope of finding their way home.

In the research console, the breadcrumb has been implemented to indicate the current:

1. Organisation / account
2. Selected study
3. Selected survey. If a survey is selected, the survey’s status will also be displayed.

Account: Clyral; Study: Training; Survey: Training Demo

Clicking anywhere on the Breadcrumb will open the Quick-switch panel which has been reworked to make navigation substantially easier.

Quick-switch

Although the Quick-switch is not altogether new (you were always able to open it by clicking on the arrow at the top left of the screen) we have redesigned this feature to provide a much more intuitive and comprehensive set of navigation options.

The Quick-switch provides instant access to every study and survey which you have permission to access. Simply select the study and then choose the survey you’d like to access. You will be redirected to the same tab you’re currently viewing but with the chosen survey in context. Alternatively, if you’d like to see an overview of activity for a study, select it from the Quick-switch then click the “Dashboard” link at the top right.

The Quick-switch panel provides access to all studies and surveys.

Depending on the permissions you have been granted, you may also be able to create new surveys and studies from the Quick-switch panel.

Ribbon

If you’ve used Microsoft Office 2007, you’ll be familiar with the concept of a ribbon. When you select one of the main function groups (such as Home, Insert, View, etc), a ribbon with additional actions related to the group appears. The use of a ribbon in the research console provides access to common functionality based on the main tab selected.

Actions available from the dashboard ribbon

By enabling this service for a fieldworker’s SIM card, you are able to automatically specify recharges consisting of airtime, data, SMS bundles or a combination. Configured recharges take place without your intervention and only if a fieldworker’s credit drops below a predefined threshold.

By recharging with data only, misuse of provided airtime can be dramatically reduced along with the associated logistics of monitoring, purchasing and loading of traditional airtime.

Currently this service is available for all prepaid Vodacom and MTN SIMs in South Africa.

Please contact us should you wish to enable this service and for pricing information.

Until recently, the trigger mechanism only supported notifications of newly received submissions, however, we have now implemented the ability to notify your custom application(s) when a submission is edited in your research console as well – thereby maintaining data integrity between our systems and yours.

In both cases we have also improved the processing mechanism in terms of dealing with failed delivery. The submission trigger mechanism will now reprocess a trigger in the event of a delivery failure (such as network failure or your server being offline). This ultimately means you are always ensured of receiving a notification of a submission even if your processing application is down while a submission is received. The new processing mechanism will make up to 6 attempts to notify your application as per the following schedule (assuming failure of the first and subsequent requests):

• Retry 1 minute after first failure
• Retry 5 minutes after second failure
• Retry 20 minutes after third failure
• Retry 1 hour after fourth failure
• Retry 4 hours after fifth failure

If the result of the 6^th attempt is a failure, we will notify you via email and wait on a resolution before re-processing the undelivered notification(s).

A successful notification delivery is defined as an attempt that results in a “200 OK” HTTP status code being returned by the relevant web server. If any other code is returned our system will deem the delivery a failure and enter the reprocessing workflow as described above. Furthermore, if a “500 Internal Server Error” code is returned we will record the error message returned and supply this information to you in the event the notification is not delivered after 6 successive attempts.

In terms of the requirements for setting up a create/update notification trigger, we simply require the URL endpoint of your service and the survey ID you wish to setup the trigger(s) for. Once setup, the notification to your URL endpoint is simply made via a GET request with the following query string parameters.

On submission created notification:

On submission modified notification:

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please feel free to post them here, alternatively, please contact support.

We hope you find these new features useful.

We recommend that you always access your console through this secure instance, and as such, have decided to implement a minor update which will ensure anyone connecting to the default address will be automatically redirected to the secure instance. This update will be in effect from 27 August 2009.

For those of you utilising the API service, this will impact your applications as the API will no longer be available from the default (HTTP) endpoint. The API is already available via HTTPS so the change is simply limited to updating your configuration to point to the HTTPS address.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause you but this change is in the interest of improved security. Please feel free to contact support should you have any queries or concerns.

When an authorised user edits a response, a record is kept of who made the change, when they made it and what the original value was. That way, you can keep track of any modifications made.

A full audit history is maintained for each field.

To view the response change log, simply click through to view the full response. The change log is shown below a field in red if any changes have been made.

In this model, only fields which are actually presented are billed for. For example: If, in a 25 question survey, a fieldworker was presented with an instruction and 9 questions (and not all 25 questions due to skip logic), 10 fields (9+1) would be billed for when receiving the response.

This model ensures that you only pay for the fields actually shown to the fieldworker.

What’s changed?

We’ve now taken this a step further and have upgraded our billing system to only bill for questions where a response is captured. As a result, if a fieldworker doesn’t enter a value for a question (only possible if you specify the question as optional of course) or if the field is an instruction, no credit will be deducted for that field.

We’ve implemented this new billing model for a few reasons:

1. Although we really feel that Mobile Researcher is an affordable solution when compared with just about every other option available, we wanted allow our users to be able to directly justify costs with the number of data elements actually captured.
2. We wanted to encourage the use of instructions where appropriate to improve the layout and clarity of our users’ surveys. With instructions now carrying no cost, hopefully this will achieve this goal.

This update will take immediate effect on all accounts – no action is required by existing users.

Thanks again for your continued support.

How does it work?

It’s really simple to duplicate an existing survey. Users with a survey designer role can now access a new menu option from the Design sub-menu.

"Duplicate Survey" is the second menu option in the Design sub-menu

The entire survey, including skip logic, constraints and translations will be copied into a new survey (with the same name and the word “Duplicated” appended). Simply rename the new survey as needed. You can also then make any necessary changes to the new survey as though you had built it from scratch.

We hope that this new feature allows you to really work at creating some great templates which you can use to promote best practice within your organisation in terms of survey design.

With this new feature, you may optionally elect to use a short naming convention whereby each option in a multi-select question response is identified by QUESTION-NAME_OPTION-VALUE instead of QUESTION-NAME_OPTION-LABEL.  This results in significantly shorter, but still unique column headings.

To use this feature, simply tick the box next to “Short Naming Option” when generating a result set from the Analytics tab.

A limitation of Microsoft Excel 2003 is that it can’t support worksheets containing more than 256 columns.  With this new feature, when this occurs, your exported workbook will automatically be split into multiple worksheets to compensate for this limitation.  The system will create as many worksheets (parts) as necessary to keep the number of columns to under 256 in each.  It will also ensure that splits only occur on question boundaries (i.e. a multi-select question won’t be split across two worksheets).

In each worksheet, the first two columns will be duplicated: Response ID and Fieldworker.  This will allow you to follow a single response easily from one part to another. 

We hope this new feature helps you in managing long surveys.