SurveyCTO Server Management
In SurveyCTO, all questionnaires and data associated with a project is uploaded to a server. The word server sounds technical but from the perspective of the user, it is nothing more complicated than opening an internet browser and logging in to your project's account on the SurveyCTO website. We will keep using the term server but for most purposes it can just as well be thought of as an "account".
The server is the hub through which all the questionnaire and data related to SurveyCTO is communicated. The server is used
- by the project team to upload questionnaires
- by field teams to download and then upload data collected with those questionnaires
- and finally by the project team to download the data collected from the field.
The server has more features, but the main purpose is for the project team to communicate which data to collect via uploading the questionnaire and for the field team to collect and upload that data.
If you are working on a DIME project and you are still just developing your questionnaire, please read about DIME's development server first.
Read fist
- If you update your server, you must update the SurveyCTO Collect app on all tablets using that server. Only update SurveyCTO collect through the server.
Plans
SurveyCTO offers multiple types of plans that suit the needs of different projects. This section describes what features have made various DIME projects use different plans. For full details on the plans, see http://www.surveycto.com/plans.html.
Free Plans
There is a free plan for new users who want to explore SurveyCTO. In return for using the free account, the user needs to be active in the forums on SurveyCTO's website. DIME projects can instead use DIME's development server that is free of charge for the project team. Two reasons for a DIME project to use the free plan despite having access to the development server are
- the project team wants to upload test data which is not allowed on the development server but project funding hasn't been disbursed yet
- the project team does not want to set up a paid server because data collection is still several months away
Paid Plans
Aside from cost, users are not required to participate in the forums when using the paid plan and they have access to the SurveyCTO support center.
There are three paid plans which differ in the features they provide. All servers have limits on the number of questionnaires allowed, the amount of data that can be submitted, etc. The higher the plan cost, the more the number of features and the more generous the limits.
The World Bank has an internal SurveyCTO server, located here. This is the default option for DIME projects collecting primary data.
How to organize users
The user account used to set up the server will automatically become an Administrator user. For the purpose of avoiding confusion on who makes updates etc, it is probably a wise idea to keep the numbers of Administrators to two or just a few. Try to avoid only having one Administrator in case an update has to be done urgently in the middle of data collection when the Administrator user is unavailable.
You don't need to set up one "Data Collector" account for each tablet. Create one account that you then use on all tablets to log in to the survey.
We do not have any strong opinions on how to assign all the roles between Administrator and Data Collector. Feel free to do this the way you think best serves the need of your project. Many projects end up only using one type of role in addition to Administrator and Data Collector.
Keeping your server up to date
SurveyCTO regularly releases updates for the servers. These updates are not automatically pushed to all servers as one should be careful of updating a server during an ongoing survey. Each version of the survey comes with a corresponding version of the Android app SurveyCTO Collect. There is a risk of errors in communication between the Collect app and the server if the version of the Android app does not correspond to the version of the server. Ultimately, this can lead to corrupted or lost data.
When you start a new server, you get the latest version by default. It is recommended that the server is updated between each survey round when no data collection is going on. After the server is updated, all tablets need to be updated as well. Never download or update SurveyCTO Collect app from Google Play. Always exclusively follow the instructions for how to install SurveyCTO Collect on your tablet.
It is important that data is collected in the same version as the questionnaire was developed and tested in. So do your server and SurveyCTO Collect updates before you start developing a new questionnaire or making updates to an old questionnaire.
In reality, the risk of corrupted or lost data due to using a server and a questionnaire developed on two different but consecutive versions of SurveyCTO is low, but unless there is a reason for it, it is not worth taking the risk. If there is a new feature released in a new version of SurveyCTO that would add a significant value, it could be justified to update the server in the middle of an ongoing data collection. However, be aware that you are taking a small risk, and try to do it on the day the field team are off so that you have time to do at least some testing before you collect data again.
To update the server you need to be logged in to your server as an "Administrator". Then click at the settings symbol at the top of the page, and go to the subscription management page.
Back to parent topic
This article is a part of the topic Questionnaire Programming.