How to Upload Data

Open Data Capture allows you to visualize numeric measures over time in a single subject. These measures must be defined in the instrument.

Steps

1. Login to Open Data Capture

   First, login to your instance of Open Data Capture. In order to visualize subject data, you must have adequate permissions. Usually, that means you must be a group manager (or equivalent).

2. Select Your Group

   Next, select the group that you were using when you collected the data for this subject (or were using to send the subject a remote assignment). It is very important that you select the correct group, otherwise you will not see the expected data.

3. Select the Upload tab

   Select the upload tab within the side navigation bar. This will reveal a page displaying all the form instruments that are available in the current OpenDataCapture instance.

4. Select Instrument to Upload to

   Select an instrument you would like to upload data to by clicking on its title within the displayed table. This action will bring you to the upload page for the selected instrument

5. Following Proper Upload Format

   In order to properly upload data to the selected instrument, the data must follow a certain format. A sample of the instrument’s data format can be seen by clicking the download template button. Once the template is downloaded, one can fill it with external data. The template includes pre-filled columns and sample data that specify data types for each field.

6. Uploading Using Dropzone

   Once a template is filled, it can be dragged and dropped into the file dropzone. After this, click the submit button to verify the data. If the data follows the correct syntax, it is submitted to the instrument’s data table; otherwise, an error is displayed indicating which field is filled incorrectly.

7. Uploading specific Zod Data

   Some forms may have Zod field types that are challenging to represent in a standard CSV format. Therefore, specific notations must be used to ensure the upload feature can properly parse the data.

   • Set Data

     If a form has a field that accepts a set of data, such as a multi-option checklist with options a, b, and c, the proper notation for the data would be:

     • SET(a,b)
     • SET(a,b,c)
     • SET(a)

     This format allows the upload feature to correctly interpret the selected options.

   • Record Array Data

     Record array data is a custom form of data entry for when there can be multiple records for one column field. For example, the types of scans and their info in an MRI form would be record array data. If a record contains a set of questions/ data fields A, B, and C, the proper notation for data entry would be as follows:

     • RECORD_ARRAY(A: dataEntryForA, B: dataEntryForB, C: dataEntryForC ;)

     If the record array question contains multiple records the data entry would look like so:

     • RECORD_ARRAY(A: dataEntryForA, B: dataEntryForB, C: dataEntryForC ; A: dataEntryForA2, B: dataEntryForB2, C: dataEntryForC2 ;)

     Note that every ”,” notates a new entry in the record, whilst every ”;” notates a new record in the record array

   • Optional Data

     Whenever data is optional within a form it can be left empty and still be properly submitted. Any optional data column in the csv template will have an “(optional)” tag attached to its sample data entry, which means any entry in the column can be left blank. This is usually done in that case of when one column value depends on another. For example, a sessionFailed column would be followed by an optional reasonForFailure column.