Overview
By default, CommCare ODK offers a few features to help manage forms on the device. Since some of these features are not visible until discovered, and thus somewhat confusing, this page lays out the basics of how forms are managed.
Incomplete Forms
Creation
During form entry, if a user doesn't have enough data to fully complete the form, they can mark a form as incomplete. This can be accomplished in three different ways
- Pressing the back button during form entry (to cancel entry and return to CommCare) results in a popup dialog asking whether changes to the form should be saved. If the user chooses to save the changes, the current form will be saved and marked as incomplete.
- During form entry, if the user brings up the soft menu and chooses Save Form, the form will be saved in its current form as incomplete.
- At the end of form entry there is a checkbox specifing whether the form should be marked as complete (checked by default). If the user unchecked the box and then clicks the button to exit, the form will be marked incomplete
Lifecycle
Incomplete forms are saved in an encrypted format to the device's storage. The incomplete forms will stay on the device indefinitely until they are completed or removed by the user.
Resuming an Incomplete Form
There are two ways to resume entry of an incomplete form
- From the CommCareODK home screen, select Incomplete under the Form Records heading, navigate to the incomplete form, and select it.
- If a form was stared after selecting a case and then saved as incomplete, a dialog box will appear if the user chooses that form/case combination again. The dialog box will ask whether the user wants to resume the form which that had previously started and saved as incomplete, and will allow them to resume entry, start a new form, or delete the incomplete form (and start a new form).
Once form entry has resumed, the original incomplete form will still exist unless it is saved over. If a user pressed the back button and chooses to not save their changes, for instance, the original incomplete form remains as it was before form entry. If the user presses Save Form on the menu, however, it will update the existing saved form with the new version.
Removing Incomplete Forms
If an incomplete form is stale and should be removed, this can be done from either of the 2 screens described in the steps to resume the form. To remove an incomplete form from the Incomplete Forms screen, you can long-click a form and then choose Delete Record