User Asmelash Tsegay has written us the following question:
…we have received reports from field workers (about 4 cases so far) stating that they are unable to receive their assignments despite successful synchronization. Field supervisors have tried to reassign the same interviews to the interviewers, but the problem persists. I have also checked the assignment history (see below), and field workers have attempted to reassign the assignments multiple times. However, when we upload fresh assignments and assign them to the same interviewers, they can receive the new assignments. This assignment was upgraded when we changed the version of the questionnaire. Do you think this is related to the assignment upgrade or other problems that I should be aware.?*
The screenshot showing the fragment of the assignment history sent by the user shows that the assignment size has been changed to 0 (zero). Assignments of size zero do not require any interviews to be collected by the interviewer and hence do not appear on their dashboards. This is consistent with the successful synchronization and ability to receive and see the other assignments mentioned in the question.
Since only a fragment of the assignment history was sent and only for one assignment, it is not possible to say more.
@asmelash , confirm that here “Field supervisors have tried to reassign the same interviews to the interviewers, but the problem persists.” you’ve also meant assignments not interviews, which is a likely, but an unfortunate confusion.
PS: The forum has several similar threads on the topic, see, for example:
Thanks Sergiy for your Prompt response!
Regarding your clarification question, you are correct that the field supervisors have tried to reassign the same assignment not interviews as you can see in the assignment history. The assignment history is similar for all assignments reported that they are not appearing in the interviewer dashboard. I have added two more screenshots (full screen) for your reference. The change in value occurred either after the assignment is created or re-assigned to another supervisor.
@asmelash, both screenshots show that expected value for the number of interviews for each of these assignments is 0 (zero), hence the interviewers will not be receiving these assignments.
This is normal functioning of the software!
Whether the size 0 is something that you’ve expected or it comes as a surprise is an entirely different matter. The assignment history shows the account responsible for the change (Elias_naca) and the date/time when that change occurred. The time differs between all the size changes shown so far, indicating that this is likely a real human action, rather than some software-initiated action. But do get in touch with the corresponding person if you suspect otherwise.
If you suspect the other assignments may also be affected, inspect the Server Audit Log for other AssignmentSizeChanged records.
Thanks Sergiy,
The value zero was a surprise to me because this was happened only for partial of the batch assignment uploaded. I will share the audit log for the workspace where we are using to collect the data and shows no action by the field team that they have changed the value. I will share the excel file of log with you via email.
Thanks again for all you support and guidance
The log file shared by @asmelash indeed doesn’t show the change of the assignment size by the data collecting team.
Upon inspection it is found that although the events of changing the size of the assignment are being logged by the program to the workspace audit log file, the changes of the assignment size that occur as a result of closing an assignment (introduced in v19.10) are not logged. So the issue has been reproduced in assignment 14408 on the public demo server.
The following ticket has been created in our issue tracker, which can be monitored for the status of this issue:
@asmelash can confirm with the user mentioned changing the size in the screenshots above if that was the action taken (closing assignments) and if not, then inquire about what specifically was done.
