How to Build a Slack Bot for Reporting Standups
by Pharis After joining Ona as a Software Engineering Intern, I was tasked to compile and post standups for all the members of the project we were working on. At first it was a great experience, and even better we could alternate shifts with another intern. However, as time went by the task was too
New Feature: Merging Multiple Datasets Into One
Merging datasets is a new feature that lets you combine multiple datasets from different forms into a single dataset. When datasets are merged, data from 2+ parent datasets are combined and the child merged dataset gets updated whenever changes occur in the parent datasets. Viewing data in merged datasets is similar to other datasets, allowing
Dynamically Clean Shared Data with Filtered Datasets
A filtered dataset is a subset of submitted data that satisfies certain conditions set by the user. Filtered datasets are helpful when you need to share a dataset with other users, yet want to keep certain fields or records private that are repetitive, irrelevant or sensitive. Suppose you carried out a baseline survey on households
Don't Settle. Get The Right Data Collection Tool For Your Survey
Whether you are an organization carrying out humanitarian/development initiatives around the world, or a student carrying out research for a project, when it comes to selecting a data collection tool for your next survey, choosing the first result on Google’s first page may not be the wisest choice to make. You have to be thorough
Why you need to start using Google Sheets with Ona
Have you been exporting data from Ona and then uploading to Google Sheets? As part of the recent release of Ona Apps, we are excited to announce your life just got easier with our new Google Sheets integration. Ona users can now export data to, and access data directly in, Google Sheets. Six reasons to love the
XLSForm Webinar Recap
The XLSForm live webinar that took place on the 29th of June was a big success! With slightly over 100 attendees, the audience included a mix of both Ona users and other data tool users, all with a desire to learn more about XLSForm authoring. Hosted by Ona Support Manager, Sylvia Musula, the comprehensive 45 minute session
Ona now fully supports HXL
We are really excited to announce that Ona now fully supports the Humanitarian Exchange Language, or HXL. HXL is designed to improve information sharing during a humanitarian crisis by creating a simple way to promote interoperablity of data. It does this through an ingenius approach of coding data through hashmarks (#), similar to Twitter. Part of
Introducing ona.R - Easily use Ona in R
One of the great things about the R programming language is the thousands of packages users have written to solve problems in areas of data import, data wrangling and data visualization. We’re glad to introduce ona.R, a package that helps you import data from your Ona account into R. This package is a direct fork of Prabhas Pokharel’s awesome formhub.R library. As we work
Updates to user permissions in ODK Collect
One of the major new features that we introduced with the release of our new platform last fall is the ability to assign role-based permissions to projects. This had been one of our most requested features from the previous Ona version, and we’re excited to support this now for all users on ona.io. Users can now create projects on Ona and add
Exporting data with labels
A few emails have come in requesting support for questions as headings in data exports. We have heeded your call and are glad to announce this is now possible. When exporting CSV, Excel and CSV Zip files, you can choose whether labels and/or names show up as column headers. Using XLSForm syntax, the label column contains the actual