There is useful information about the form filling session that is not included in the audit log. If there are problems with a form filling session, that audit log information.
Form name, version, ID -- this is already in the instance, but it would be nice to have in the log to keep that information together with the audit.
Collect version, Android version -- useful to know if a form was filled with a buggy version of Collect
Language change -- useful to know what the enumerator was seeing when filling out the form. Translation could have been bad.
See user request: Know which language the survey was administered in
There are some ongoing conversations about introducing a virtual instance for metadata but feels separate from this implementation.
Hey @yanokwa, the Android version is one of the most important things which can help when you have a large team of data collectors. You should know who is collecting data on which version of form as well as which version of OS.
This has come up in some internal conversations, so I wanted to update my thinking on this feature.
We want to work towards full compatibility with Enketo, and because Enketo doesn't implement the audit log, I think we should be cautious about what we add to the log vs to the instance.
It'd be nice to have a systematic approach to how we decide. For example, things that could change during the form filling session (e.g., current language) seem like a good fit for the log, whereas more static variables like Android version seem like a good fit for the instance.