Presenting version 2.9 of ActivityInfo

Introduction

We’ve been working over the past few months to prepare the ground work to meet both the needs of ActivityInfo’s growing user base as well as expand the system to support new use cases like integrated survey management and advanced statistical analysis.

We’re excited to announce that the first round of these new features is out of beta and live on www.activityinfo.org!

New form designer for surveys

Many of the features we’re releasing in 2.9 are designed to support survey management with ActivityInfo. We’ve updated the form designer to feel more natural for designing forms, and we’ve improved the integration with ODK Collect, which supports mobile data collection using Android devices.

You can now add Barcode fields, which will allow your users to scan barcodes in the field with an Android device, or in the office with a USB scanner, as well as calculated fields. The form designer also supports ‘skip logic’ so that you can skip some questions based on previous answers, for example, asking questions on reproductive health only when the respondant is a woman.

We’re not just focused on surveys however!

Our goal is to provide a unified platform for data collection and analysis that brings together The improved form design process is intended to make it easier to give you more flexibility in structuring your data, whether that’s for monitoring and evaluation, reporting, case management, or even proposal management.

Cloning database templates

To this end, we’ve also released the database template feature. Instead of having to start from scratch on a new database, you can now use any existing database as a template, which will create a new empty database with a copy of the forms and indicators from the template. We hope this will support the establishment of template libraries that provide best practices for different sectors.

We’re excited that this new development has been funded directly by users, specifically the UNHCR/UNICEF information mangement working groups in Jordan and Lebanon, and through a partnership with BRAC in Bangladesh. Many thanks to those who provided countless hours beta testing!

Here’s to hoping this latest release will make ActivityInfo more suited for your needs,

And as usual, we’re eager to hear from your experiences,

The ActivityInfo team