Clean Form Submission

Owned by Jeremy W.
Last updated: Mar 28, 2024 by Krinda Wernicke
3 min read

The Clean Form Submission feature allows you to modify a form that has already been submitted by using CommCareHQ. Using this feature will only affect your form data and will not alter your cases in any way. If you need to edit your case data, please see https://dimagi.atlassian.net/wiki/x/PQTKfw .

Overview

This feature adds a button called Clean Form Submission to every Form Details page  (accessible by going to the Reports/Submit History report and clicking "View Form").

Press the “Clean Form Submission” button will open a modal that displays all of the questions in the form. This modal will contain the form questions and hidden values, ordered in the same manner that they would have appeared for the user on the mobile device during the time of submission. You can search for specific questions by either Label or Question ID using the search bar in the top right.

Most questions will appear with a text box containing their current value. Multiple choice and checkbox questions will appear with a dropdown that contains the options for that question (in the version of the app matching that form submission) and also allows entering a value not in that list of options. After editing any answer, it will be highlighted in green indicating that it has been changed. 

Please note that editing a form will not alter the corresponding case, nor will it re-run any calculations. You are only editing the form itself. 

This means if the form property is used in any calculate conditions of other form properties, you will need to edit both the original form property and the other affected form properties. 

Make any changes you want, and then click on submit. When viewing the form again you will see a notification across the top that the form was edited:

Just click on the link in the notification bar in order to view the original version.

Important Notes

  • You will be editing the submission as the Web User you are logged in as

  • The submission date/time of the form will not change.

Limitations

  • When you edit a question type, calculations are not run for other questions in the form. You are only editing that specific answer and it has no effect on other questions or case properties. 

  • Cannot edit complex question types (Multimedia, Android Callouts or Barcodes)

  • Cannot edit skipped questions

    • If a question did not appear to the user in the original form entry due to a display condition, you will not be able to edit the answer.

  • No validations conditions are checked.

    • If a question has a validation condition, that logic will not be checked when you edit an answer. If you make a mistake, you can simply edit the answer again.