How to Use the Search Function in XLSForm, ODK, and KoboToolbox - when you have thousands of choices

[@jacksonjackson4532]

Really I have enjoyed much, GOD BLESS YOU

[@md.shahnewazparvez9806]

Hi Jenna, Your kobo tutorial videos are fantastic. Could you please share use how to eliminate the selected dropdown list for the second repeated table?

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Hi! Thank you so much! Glad they're useful! I'm not sure I fully understand your question can you provide some more details and an example of how your XLSForm is set up, what two questions you're looking at, and how you want the behaviour of the dropdown list to work?

[@dagizmedia2690]

Grateful to see list of places from my country as an example!!

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Awww, that's amazing to hear! Blessings to you today!

[@taqishayan5475]

Love the background music!

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Thanks!

[@nurzanty]

Thanks Jenna for the tutorial! The search function does not seem to work using Kobo humanitarian server. The choices from external file will appear only if I use "select_one_from_file xxx" in the type. But, I'm struggling to filter the follow up questions (cascading), e.g. district, sub-district, and villages using this approach. Would appreciate if you or others have any tips.

[@gastonmanduca3055]

Your tutorial is PERFECT.. thank you very much...

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

That's such a kind comment, thank you so much!!!!

[@mowaffakbakkar-469]

Hi Jana! What a very useful channel yours is. Thank you for the simple and great content. And I have a question please. Can we use the search funtion on muliple subdivisions (e.g. Coountry > State > City > Village, etc) ?

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Yes you can!

[@marceleyebiyi1234]

Great. Very useful. Thanks a lot. Please is there any way to use Fingerprint capturing in XLSForm? Thanks in advance for feedback. Marcel

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

There is actually, yes. If you Google "simprints and XLSFORM", check into that. We don't have a video of that yet, though...

[@dickoa]

Thanks a lot for this tutorial, I was struggling with some villages name I wanted to include in a survey and this might be a perfect solution to include a list. Thanks again,

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

I'd love to know how it works out! Please drop me a message to let me know if it works!

[@ariful48]

thank you, I can't figure out what's the difference between pull data and search function. can you explain it?

[@sabkuchdhela191]

Am looking for guidance in cascading select multiple options thru external csv as options.. can u make a video on it?

[@fainanyirashumbusho5742]

Thanks for sharing the templates worked well for me however in the choices tab when the list is long it doesn't work .

[@mamadoubalde5748]

If we have 2 questions with the same list How to exclude an answer item that was chosen in the first question. Thanks

[@danco348]

Hi Jenna, great tutorial! The auto-complete search would have worked however, there was a typo in the formula - i.e., 2 commas instead on 1.

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Yes - you're exactly right - I discovered the same type and made a follow up video the week after :) Much appreciated - thanks for taking the time to help out!

[@bickramshrestha1137]

Thank you very useful video, however, does it work for web version (enketo)?

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Great question! Can you look at using 'select_one_from_file' as a possible option which should work with Enketo? kzbin.info/www/bejne/r5q1pHtnq9uWeLc

[@abdoulayeleye5399]

hi jannah is it possible to have a constraint that allows not to fill in twice the same answer for a day.

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Ooohhh, good question. In order to do something like this, we'd need to know from the server that there was already a submission. I wonder if you could do this by connecting a project to itself dynamically. It's theoretically possible, but I'd have to try it in order to verify. Will add this to the list of ideas to try. Can you check out this documentation: support.kobotoolbox.org/dynamic_data_attachment.html and this forum post about connecting to itself: community.kobotoolbox.org/t/link-project-to-itself-for-using-and-displaying-data-collected-on-same-form/35457

[@abdoulayeleye5399]

@@HumanitarianDataSolutions Thanks professor.

[@majedalhasani2749]

Thank you Janna good this makes it easy

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Oh great, I'm glad it does!

[@Jace0241]

This tutorial is phenomenal. Thank you for sharing!!!

[@lordman6695]

Is there possiblity to make search or pulldata or lookup inside same xls form, something like vlookup in Excel exactly. Thank you.

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Hmmmm... So, yes there is. It only really works with the Collect App, though, not with the Web browser version of the form. Is that okay?

[@lordman6695]

@@HumanitarianDataSolutions Thanks, unfortunately not. Anyway I used a helper csv file. Thanks again

[@thangnguyenhuu556]

Thanks so much

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

You're welcome! Sorry I didn't see this when you first sent the comment - hope it was helpful!

[@BoikhutsoKgwadi]

Is it possible to have a digital questionnaire that will allow an enumerator to search recently added data instead of having a seperate CSV file?

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Great question. For KoboToolbox, this isn't yet possible, no. You could look into ODK-X.

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

This is now possible to connect two kobotoolbox projects together to search recently collected data: support.kobotoolbox.org/dynamic_data_attachment.html

[@sidyndiaye943]

Merci beaucoup Janna

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

C'est ma plaisir!

[@sujitshrestha9761]

Thank you so much for the tutorial video. It works perfectly in the mobile app. Is there any way we can customize this functionality into the browser?

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Thank you! Great question, I'll check into it and let you know!

[@fahmiyanuarfaridz7889]

@@HumanitarianDataSolutions Is there any update regarding this? I also look into it, yet has no expected result atm. I also wonder whether KoboCollect apps allow anonymous data entry. Hope you'd notice my question, Janna! Great video btw!

[@iliasz.5232]

@@HumanitarianDataSolutions hey there Janna. Is there a workaround to make it work when loading the form on a web browser? We need something that can work on all devices and only Android has the Kobo Collect or ODK Collect app.

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

@@iliasz.5232 For tools that work on ios, what's your budget? You can check into other tools like TaroWorks, SURVEYCTO, Dharma (BAO Systems), compare pricing and platform functionality. For the search function, still doesn't work on the browser. How many options are you selecting from? Search is good if you're searching from 10000+ options. Let me know!

[@iliasz.5232]

@@HumanitarianDataSolutions So nice hearing from you! I'm mostly interested in the Search part of the video (which is really useful to show choices that are filtered through an answer that was given previously, like "Country" in your example). Autocomplete is not important for my specific case (in fact after testing and seeing it work, i disabled it because it was confusing in my case, so i'm just using minimal search). Also I don't have thousands of rows. Not at all.

[@anthonygikurinchagwa3277]

Thanks, very simple and clear

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Glad it worked for you :)

[@franckytohanay3320]

Excellent tutorial! thanks a lot :)

[@hayatullahdanishjow]

Thank you for your great work. I have created a test form, but it didn't work, then I downloaded your example from the given link and uploaded it, but unfortunately, it also didn't work. I really don't know whether there is some setting for enabling this functionality or what? I will be happy to have your feedback.

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Oh dear, sorry I didn't pick this up a bit sooner, but I was wondering if you were still having this issue? What part of the process is not working for you?

[@hayatullahdanishjow]

@@HumanitarianDataSolutions Thanks for responding, when I upload the xls, deploy it, and upload csv. when I access the form through browser, when write some thing, it does show anything and when i click the dropdown, in the first option i get ... and second option placename is displayed. thank you

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

@@hayatullahdanishjow hi! Yes, so the search function unfortunately doesn't work in the browser... It only works on the phone Collect app... Can you confirm if you can see the search working on your phone Collect app?

[@hamasalam665]

Hello Thanks for the video, I have a question this method is not working if I want to use KoBo on browser/using laptop

[@varunthampi5612]

Hi Jana, love your videos Could you pair this with a cascading filter?

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

I've not combined them, but if you do, can you let me know if it works?

[@naeemalsaleh9215]

Thank you so much for this very helpful video, I just have one issue, the autocomplete doesn't work with Pulldata function. basically, I have a list of beneficiary code, I want my team to select one (I did it using autocomplete) and then I want few information to be displayed about this beneficiary (colledcted during assessment) and I used pulldata function but it doesn't work it was working fine when the " select code" question was a text, but when I turned it into select_one question for autocomplete porposes, the pulldata stopped working

[@nightshift4587]

Great video, very helpful, thank you for sharing.

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Thanks so much! Glad it helped ☺️👍

[@CassavaMatters]

Has anyone ever used a dropdown list of all countries and the states under each of them? I want to include it in the form I'm developing

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

If you found this list, are you able to share it!? Or are you still looking for this list?

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Just Googled a bit, what about this link : www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/10m-cultural-vectors/10m-admin-1-states-provinces/

[@sebastien8553]

On line 17 / appearance, you seem to have two commas next to each other and this might be why your autocomplete crash?

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

You're exactly right. I recorded this one shortly after: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pp6sdWOOhLt7rs0 Thanks!

[@prashantprashant526]

Great tutorial! Helped a lot, Thanks :) Is there any way I can count the output of search. Example, if 10 or 20 records matched with search criteria.

[@abdullahikelly9271]

Very useful thanks Emma

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Thank you very much :) (and also just to let you know my name is Janna :)

[@abdullahikelly9271]

@@HumanitarianDataSolutions sorry I meant janna.

[@drnekodr]

Is there a way to generate those "pcodes" automatically in the CSV file or did you have to assign them yourself?

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Hi there! Thanks for the question! The PCODES are based on shared data sets produced by the UN. So I didn't generate them, they're using standardized codes.

[@bostanfahim3658]

Why don't we use the Choice Filter?

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Great question! Choice Filter is definitely what you should use as a default. However, if you have more than about 15,000 or 16,000 choices in your list, it breaks KoboToolbox 🤔 So the search function is really when you have MASSIVE choice lists that are just too big for the choice filter to manage well.

[@Nr4310]

Hello, my Survey uses the function "value" instead of "name" in the choices sheet. How can I adapt my CSV file or what do I have to write into the "value" field in order to be able to implement the autocomplete function?

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Hi! What survey software are you using the Xlsform with?

[@Nr4310]

@@HumanitarianDataSolutions Hey :) I am going to use SurveyCTO, but I am also familiar with KoboToolbox

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

For autocomplete, it should just be an "appearance"... Did you try writing autocomplete into the appearance column on your 'survey' sheet?

[@lehimarhernandez1286]

Thanks for sharing

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

Thanks for watching!

[@solomon337]

I see my city Addis and village Lege Tafo

[@parveenbhardwaj4605]

This doesn't work for kobo.humanitarianresponse

[@HumanitarianDataSolutions]

I'll give it a look Parveen and get back to you. It should work exactly the same, but do you have a specific example of where things are going wrong?

[@parveenbhardwaj4605]

@@HumanitarianDataSolutions I am using the same method you mentioned