Magpi Support

Originally from ticket #1141.

Hello,

I'm hoping you can help me to better understand the Autofill option or
whether there is a solution available to a common issue we face in using
our forms. For a few of our forms, data collectors in the field will
complete the same form for many products stored at the same facility.
I'm wondering if it is possible for some of the information,
particularly demographic information, to be copied over each time they
select "Add new form" at the end of the survey. I selected the Autofill
option when creating the form but realized that this copies over only
the 1st entry made, whether you are adding a 2nd form or a 10th form.
This is helpful at first but when the demographic information changes,
as the data collector later heads to another facility, copying over the
1st response no longer is helpful 20 or so entries later.

Are there any recommendations you could make on this issue? Is there
something more to the autofill option I'm not seeing?

Thank you for your help!

Erin

Erin Bogue

Public Health Logistics Officer Intern

John Snow, Inc.
USAID | DELIVER PROJECT

JSI Logistics Services
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Hi Erin,

You are not doing anything wrong, it basically works that way. Once the 1st response is set, it repeats for the subsequent records until you remove the autofill option on the website and re-download the form again.

Regards,
George
DD Support

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Erin,

If I can weigh in on this, our to-do list does include modifying the autofill to work as you want, but it's not very high on the list. There is, however, a workaround that could help you.

I've attached a document explaining this in detail, but basically you can create two forms and link them by including a common unique identifier for the facility. Each facility would have one unique ID but many products would have the same ID (that of the facility to which they "belong").

You would just need to first complete a form for a facility, and note the unique identifier (which could be an ID number, or perhaps the facility name -- entered using a multiple choice question, hopefully, to ensure consistent spelling, etc).

Then when filling out the second form for the product, the first thing you'd enter would be the unique identifier for that facility.

Later, when analyzing, you can use the unique identifier to connect the two datasets.

This will happen automatically later this year, when we add automated subforms to EpiSurveyor, but you can still do it "manually" in the meantime.

Let me know if you have any questions after looking at the attached document.

Best,

Joel