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This page outlines recommendations for designing and building useful CommCare applications. These are compiled from collective experience in app construction and are only recommendations. Individual projects could vary substantially and the overall best practice is to go through extensive user testing and piloting to identify and correct language, media, or work flows that are confusing.

Table of Contents

Question ID and Case Property Naming

Have descriptive and consistent naming for your Question IDs and case properties. They are used in data exports and when doing case configuration.  

  • Descriptive: Use something like date_of_birth not dob.  CommCare allows for long names if you want to be descriptive.  Another person should be able to looks at your names and understand the data. 

  • Consistent: 

    • Be consistent with casing (i.e. always use lower case) 

    • Use the same name for the same question in different forms and the same case property name in different forms

    • User underscores instead of spaces (as spaces are not allowed)

To test your Question IDs, choose "export form contents" under Tools to view all questions in your form.   

Case Management

Some important things to consider:

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  • Turn on CommCare Sense Mode For most applications, this will result in a simpler user experience for low literate users.  Some advanced features may be hidden (ex. Saved/Incomplete forms on CommCare Android)

  • Turn on Two-Way Sync:  This will let ensure that if cases are reassigned, the user will be able to load them on their phone. 

  • Setup Daily/Weekly Sync: If you're using case sharing, make sure you have daily or weekly sync on your phones so that users have a fresh version of any cases. 

Language Support

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For multilingual applications make sure each of the following is translated:

  • Question labels/display text in a form

  • Names of forms and modules

  • Any information displayed in the case list and detail (including ID mapping)

  • User Interface translations (Translate the CommCare User Interface) for your language.  Common language (ex. back, form is loading) should be updated.

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