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CommCare Sync is Sync is a self-hosted, standalone, web-based application app that can be used to manage a CommCare “data warehouse.” It’s acts as a suite of configurations, with an improved user experience UX from the current command-line Data line Data Export Tool. This turn-key tool allows you to export your data from CommCare in a simple, configurable way and CommCare and save it to a local or cloud-based database (MySQL, PostgresSQL, Amazon RDS, GCP Cloud SQL, Azure SQL Database). |
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Installation
If you wish to try out, or self-host CommCare Sync, you can do so by setting it up from the source code which is available in the commcare-sync Github repository.
For help installing and managed production environments you can follow the documentation of the commcare-sync ansible repository.
Note that Dimagi does not provide support for self-hosted environments. For any issues or questions on hosting, please post to the open source developer forums. If you want Dimagi help hosting CommCare Sync, you can contactour delivery team.
Functionality
This set of tools provides a user-friendly interface for administrators to set up their CommCare data pipeline. The functionality includes the ability to:
Automatically generatea Data Export Tool config file from CommCare.
Create project space(s) in CommCare Sync, connected to your CommCare project space(s) and your database(s)
Upload a DET config file that will automatically pull data from your CommCare project space to your database on a set schedule
Monitor your data syncs via CommCare Sync's log feature
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In CommCare HQ Data page, create a form or case export
Download the DET config file
Open your Excel DET config file to see the fields from your export with the option of mapping specific data types. If you aren't transforming your data, there's no step needed here.
Open CommCare Sync, create a new account (instructions below)
Add a project by pasting your CommCare project space name
Add your database via the Admin Site (can be any available database)
Add an export from your new project, and add your database and your config file you downloaded in step 2
Run export. This applies the configuration file to do an initial sync of all the data from your CommCare project space.
View the log to see more info - like to confirm how much data was pulled in
Connect your BI tool of choice, and start exploring the data
Note for projects syncing data from multiple CommCare project spaces:
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Download your DET config file from CommCare
Download or create a Data Export Toolconfig file.
The easiest way to create these is to start with a normal export configuration on HQ and have it generated. See Creating an Excel Query File in CommCare HQ https://dimagi.atlassian.net/wiki/x/JCrKfw for more details.
Edit the DET file using the “best practices” below
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If you haven’t already, add the CommCare project space in the “CommCare Setup” tab.
If you haven’t already, add a CommCare account that has access to the project space.
Important note to Dimagi users: Do NOT use your superuser @dimagi.com account, follow the steps below to create a user below. Create a web user for a specific project, and set up API key for that user (under Account Settings). You can use a "+" in your email address that tells you what your web user is for. e.g. "firstnamelastname+demo-cc-sync@dimagi.com"
Add the export from the “Exports” tab.
On the export details page, click “run”.
When the run completes, view the logs to confirm it ran successfully.
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Databases can be added by site admins by using the "databases" link in CommCare Sync sidebar navigation. The database may need to also be separately created by a system admin on the server.
Administration
System administartion administration is documented in our production environment documentation.
CommCare Sync Data
View Exact Data Sent to the Device
You can use the same API URL which is used by the mobile devices to see what data will be sent to the phone or web application during a sync.
View Restore Data for Any Mobile User in HQ | |
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View All Data Associated with a User: | |
App Specific: | http://www.commcarehq.org/a/{my-project-space}/phone/restore/{app_id}/?as={user}@{my-project-space}.commcarehq.org&version=2.0 (assumes current state of the app, not particular build) |
Build Specific: | |
Additional Parameters | |
since={previous restore id} | Incremental response since the previous sync. |
items=true | Include the item number in the response. |
overwrite_cache=true | Don't return a cached value but rather recompute the response. Deletes the cache, so the next time you sync on the phone, it will use the newly computed result. |
raw=true | Raw restore response without the UI. |
device_id={device_id} | Fake a restore from a particular device id. WebApps uses a device ID of the form "WebAppsLogin". |
app_id={app_id} | Restore using app aware sync. This will only sync down the reports for that particular application. |
case_sync={clean_owners | livequery} | Select which case sync algorithm to use with this restore |
hide_xml=true | Shows only aggregate case counts, without loading associated XML data |
fail_hard=true | Useful to debug issues where restore has missing or unexpected data. Instead of swallowing up UCR fixture errors during a restore, this forces a 500 error which a dev can investigate to find the root cause. |