D - 1/28, Vasant Vihar New Delhi - 110057, India
www.dimagi.com
Tel: +91 11-46704670
CommCare Form Builder
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D - 1/28, Vasant Vihar New Delhi - 110057, India
www.dimagi.com
Tel: +91 11-46704670
1. Question Types
TEXT QUESTION. Free form text entry
LABEL. Used to display text or images only e.g. a counseling message. No input
required.
MULTIPLE CHOICE (SINGLE ANSWER): A question with multiple choices where only
one choice can be selected
MULTIPLE CHOICE (MULTIPLE ANSWER): A question with multiple choices where
one or more choice can be selected
INTEGER: A whole number. If a 0 is entered as the first digit, the 0 will not be stored.
PHONE NUMBER/NUMERIC ID: any identifying number can be entered, including
those starting with a 0
DECIMAL any decimal number can be entered
DATE: For any date question, shows up in calendar format
TIME: Any time question
DATE AND TIME: Any date and time question together
GROUP: This type of question is a container for other questions. Questions added
within a 'group' will appear within a given section header.
REPEAT GROUP: (Advanced)
IMAGE CAPTURE: Capture an image/photo (Android only)
AUDIO CAPTURE: Capture an audio recording (Android only).
VIDEO CAPTURE: Capture a video recording (Android only)
GPS: get a GPS reading
BARCODE SCAN: activates a barcode scanner to capture information (must be
separately installed)
PASSWORD: Text question, where the characters you enter are displayed as '*'
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D - 1/28, Vasant Vihar New Delhi - 110057, India
www.dimagi.com
Tel: +91 11-46704670
2. Question Required?
If you check this box it will make the question mandatory - a user will
not be able to skip it without providing an answer. They will get an
error message stating that they must answer the question.
3. Display Condition
This is the space for introducing basic skip logic- when do you want a question to show and when it should not show.
Click “edit” to access the “Expression Editor”.
For the display condition section you are stating the conditions under which you want the question to be displayed
(NOT the situation in which it should skip).
For example, consider a question that asks for a cellphone number. We only want to show that question if the answer
to the previous question ("Do you have a cellphone?") is yes.
1. Once in the expression editor click "add expression"
2. From the question tree, drag the "Do you have a cellphone?" question over to the first box until the mouse shows a
green check mark- then drop it in.
3. Grab the "yes" answer from the "Do you have a cellphone?" question and drag that into the second box.
4. Make sure that the drop down menu between the boxes says "is equal to."
5. Verify that a green "OK" box appears at the end of the expression
6. Click "save to form"- you will see the expression now appears in the box next to "skip condition"
Now this question will only show when the answer to "Do you have a cellphone?" is "Yes."
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D - 1/28, Vasant Vihar New Delhi - 110057, India
www.dimagi.com
Tel: +91 11-46704670
4. Validation Condition
You can minimize errors and ensure consistency by putting constraints in "Validate Condition" on the types of answers
your users can submit. Sticking with the cellphone question, we may know that the cellphone number should be 10
digits long. So we can add a constraint that forces users to provide a 10 digit number.
1. Once again, open the expression editor in "Validate Condition" by clicking "edit"
2. Click "add expression"
3. Drag the same question you are working on ("What is your cellphone number?") from the question tree over to the
first box. You should see a "." appear.
4. Set the drop-down menu to "is less than"
5. In the second box, type 10000000000 (11 digits)
6. Repeat 2-5 using the expression "is greater than" and the value 99999999 (8 digits)
You will have written two expressions and can save these to the form.
Back in "Logic Properties" you can also write a "constraint message" that let's the user know about the constraint. For
example, in this situation the message could read "cellphone numbers must be 10 digits." You can put this in each
language, and click on "Constraint Itext ID" to automatically generate an ID for this message.
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D - 1/28, Vasant Vihar New Delhi - 110057, India
www.dimagi.com
Tel: +91 11-46704670
5. Hidden Value
A Hidden Value is used for complex calculations, amongst other things.
For example, let’s say you have a question asking for a person’s weight and a question asking for a person’s
height, and you want CommCare to calculate the person’s BMI (= weight / height 2). This is how you do it:
1. You create a hidden value with Question ID “bmi_hidden_value”.
2. In the Calculate Condition box, click “Edit” to access the Expression Editor
3. Check the box for “Advanced Mode”
4. In Advanced Mode, you can drag the height and weight questions into the Expression Box and use these
references to do calculations.
5. After creating the proper expression, click “Save to Form” and the bmi_hidden_value will now contain the
person’s calculated BMI.
6. Translations
If you want your application to be in multiple languages,
1.
2.
3.
4.
Go to the Languages section in the left side menu.
Click “+ Add Language” and type your language code (hin for Hindi, mar for Marathi)
Click Save.
Now the all the module and form names will need to be updated in both languages. For every given question, there
will now be two parts where you fill in the display text – one for the display text in English and one for the display
text in your second language.
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