If a version 1 questionnaire is used to create questionnaires and is deleted. Then if a version 2 questionnaire is used to create assignments for all interviewers. If one interviewer synced using version 1 and does not sync and during that time version 1 was deleted from the HQ and replaced by version 2. I noticed that the interviews done for the deleted questionnaire version 1 can still be synced even though it was deleted from the HQ. Will the completed assignments using version 1 which are synced to the HQ be deleted immediately when the questionnaire is synced? What happens to this data, where is it? How can it be retrieved? Should the best course of action in this case not have been to prevent version1 completed questionnaire from syncing since it was deleted from the HQ?
This me this problematic, there should be a warning to the interviewer saying that your data will be permanently lost since there is a new version of the questionnaire, please contact your supervisor before you proceed to sync this tablet. This will at least allow the data from the previous version to be saved before syncing occurs and the data is deleted.
Hello Edwin.
The interviewers don’t make such decisions. Neither do the supervisors. Not even HQ can delete a survey. Hence unless the admin steps in, the data is never lost.
Deleting a survey is a rarely needed action. It is described here:
https://support.mysurvey.solutions/faq/deleting-a-survey/
It mentions very specifically:
When a survey is deleted all data collected as part of that survey is irretrievably and irreversibly lost. Hence the same steps should be applied as described in actions after the end of the survey.
The steps #1…#5 in that checklist make sure that you do just that: send your data to the server, instead of losing it.
Step #5 in actions to do before the survey calls for not working under the admin account to not permit this even accidentally:
https://support.mysurvey.solutions/faq/actions-before-the-survey-starts/
Have you followed this practice?
Total work stoppage before every update of the questionnaire? No. Many clients update the questionnaires every month or two.
On the contrary: The HQ shows for every assignment or rejected interview whether it has been “received on the tablet”. If so, there is potentially new data on that interview/assignment and deleting such a survey is not safe. The latest release has changed this flag to a date to help guesstimate the chances that the interviewer has already started working on this assignment/interview.
Perhaps you could explain why the survey was deleted and, perhaps, why this was done despite the recommendations. This would help us formulate the best advice for your situation and perhaps improve the documentation page.
Best, Sergiy Radyakin
Following up on the #1 post above,
The completed interviews sent to the server as part of a deleted survey will be accepted by the server and deleted by the tablet as usual. Subsequent processing on the server will find no place to store it and will dump it as “non-processable” (aka “broken”).
An indication that this has happened is a non-zero counter of broken packages in the server health check:
https://support.mysurvey.solutions/release-notes/version-20-07/
(see last screenshot).
Best, Sergiy