Community contributions to upcoming ODK 2.0 documentation refresh

Hi All,

I am currently working on migrating the ODK 2.0 documentation into Sphynx and bringing it in line with the rest of the ODK documentation. This includes bringing over all the existing ODK 2.0 documentation (both on the website and the wiki) as well as adding some more content to ease the learning curve for new users. Some example improvements include intro pages for the tools and for the suite as a whole, new tutorials, and documentation for the example apps.

On the most recent ODK 2.0 developer call I asked for feedback on the current documentation and for community requests going forward. I wanted to repeat that request here for anyone who couldn’t make the call. Please post any feelings you have about the current documentation: likes, dislikes, missing elements, inaccuracies, frustrations, cool ideas, etc. I want to hear about your experiences. And if you have any materials you want to share I’d love to include them.

Regards,
Jeff

1 Like

Hi Everyone!

This past summer we did a two-day training on ODK 2.0 and wanted to share the materials here. I am going to share them in two batches. This first batch is a series of slides for workflow and setup in ODK 2.0. We have a second batch of materials forthcoming of hands-on exercises (and excel “solutions”!) in programming the survey, but we gave the training in rev208 so the team is chipping away at updating those to rev218. Stay tuned!

Slides are numbered in sequence:

01_Introduction to Structure of ODK 01.14.18.pptx (75.5 KB)

02_ODK Setting up ODK Software on Windows Computers 01.14.18.pptx (2.1 MB)

03_ODK Aggregate --Setting up the server 01.14.18.pptx (346.1 KB)

04_ODK Setting up ODK on Tablets 01.14.18.pptx (99.5 KB)

05_ODK Pushing Surveys from App-designer to Tablet 01.14.18.pptx (1.4 MB)

06_ODK From Tablet to Server 01.14.18.pptx (404.6 KB)

07_Downloading data with ODK suitcase 01.14.18.pptx (66.2 KB)

One caveat:
We did this training with ODK rev208 tools. We tried to update to the current links for current downloads, but may have missed some, so please make sure you go to the latest versions of all of the directions/downloads.

Also, if you find any errors, please note them, or even better, if you want to do revised, improved versions, go for it!

Best,
Caroline

Awesome work @elmps2018, I appreciate your work and efforts towards ODK and these presentations will help ODK community a lot.

Narendra

Hi Caroline,

These are fantastic. Thanks so much for sharing them! I especially like the introduction and the structure of ODK.

Jeff

Thank you @elmps2018! These are great.

Hi Everyone!

Finished revising the second batch of ODK 2.0 materials from our training. This includes a series of hands on exercises in the slides with learning programming in ODK, so I am including here both the slides and the “solutions” to the exercises. These go AFTER the first set of slides in my earlier post.

The materials cover the basics of setting up your first form (08), the basics of workbook structure including different types of questions, skip patterns, grouping questions, etc. (09) and more advances aspects of workbook structure, such as calculations/assigning variables, calling on csvs for long/multi-level lists, adding sub-forms, preloading data, constraints, and language settings (10).

Slides and solutions are numbered/lettered in sequence:
08_ODK Creating and Testing a Survey in App-Designer.pptx (908.8 KB)
08_ODK Creating and Testing a Survey in App-Designer Solution.zip (23.6 KB)

09_ODK Basic Workbook Structure.pptx (157.9 KB)
09_ODK Basic Workbook Structure Solution.zip (11.4 KB)

10_ODK Advanced Workbook Structure.pptx (178.5 KB)
10_ODK Advanced Workbook Structure Solution abc.zip (43.7 KB)
10_ODK Advanced Workbook Structure Solution d.zip (42.3 KB)
10_ODK Advanced Workbook Structure Solution e.zip (43.1 KB)
10_ODK Advanced Workbook Structure Solution f.zip (10.2 KB)

As mentioned previously, we did these initially in rev208 for the training, and just revised to rev218, so let me know if we missed any changes or if you find any bugs!

Best,
Caroline

3 Likes

Thanks for making these @elmps2018 and the team at St. Catherine University! They are incredibly helpful!

@elmps2018 thank you for this. Together with the docs I am catching excellently.

Thanks to everyone for all the great work getting the ODK"2" docs up and going!

We’ve been working away on some additions and edits to the docs. Alas, editing them directly was beyond our tech skills, but we followed a suggestion to copy existing docs and then track changes in Word. So hopefully someone with better tech skills than ours can review these and integrate into docs! We tried to follow the style guide, but please let us know if we made any errors so we can do better next time :slight_smile:

Here are the three installments we’ve finished so far:

Pushing and Pulling Files 9.1.18 CGK.docx (27.6 KB)
Built in Functionality 9.1.18 CGK.docx (29.2 KB)
ODK XLSX Converter 9.1.18 CGK.docx (102.4 KB)

Happy to talk with anyone who is trying to implement about our thinking on these.

Working away on Suitcase documentation next.

Best,
Caroline, Caitlyn, and Maddy

Thanks @elmps2018, Caitlyn, and Maddy! This is great! Your contributions to the docs have been and continue to be invaluable to the community.

I am currently trying to think of the best way to create tasks for this. I’ll probably create some Github issues and link to your post. I will take care of some of the transcription, and hopefully recruit some more volunteers. I’ll update this thread when they are complete.

Apologies for the delay on this. The issues are created:

The first two would be a great option for a new contributor to the docs who wants an easy task to get started. The third is the same idea, but longer.

As a not yet, but soon to be future 2.0 user, I can’t thank your team enough for developing these. Thank you for all the effort!

(and we should work on that St. Paul ODK meet-up sometime this winter!)

Wow this is very helpful and educational @elmps2018 keep up the great work…

thank you very much @elmps2018 for the tutorials…they are much more easier to understand than the official documentation.
One quick question, how would i make a follow up form, e.g i have registered farmers using one form and then i would like to create a form that tracks their attendance to trainings that are offered to them on a monthly basis?

@david_odongo, you can do this with sub-forms, or having another form that writes to the same table. Here’s an example that does this: Hope Demo — ODK-X Docs

Hopefully from this example you can see how to do follow up.

Great Jobs…

Thanks A Lot

Thanks @elmps2018 for creating such helpful materials and even after 1 year, i’m finding it fresh. Excellent Work.

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