ODK Build¶

Warning

ODK Build is no longer being updated. Please use XLSForm instead.

ODK Build is a form designer with a drag-and-drop user interface. Build is an HTML5 web application and works best for designing simple forms.

Using ODK Build¶

Go to https://build.getodk.org and sign in.

Note

There is a downloadable version of ODK Build available.

Tip

Clicking on About ODK Build… option in the Help menu provides basic information about ODK Build.

Image showing information about ODK Build.

Creating and Saving forms¶

Options to create, open and save forms are available in the File menu.

Click on New Form to start creating a new form.

Tip

When you start building a form on ODK Build, it is named as Untitled Form. To rename it click on rename next to the form name and give a name to your form.

Click on Open Form… to open a saved form and edit it. Select the form and click on Open option in the open form window. You can also delete a saved form by clicking on X beside the form name.

To save a form click on Save. If you want to save an edited version of a previously saved form as a new form, click on Save Form as… and provide a name to the form.
To save your form on your local machine, click on Save Form to File…. You can open a form saved into your local machine by clicking on Load Form from File….

Note

Forms which are saved to your local machine have extension .odkbuild and only these forms can be loaded into ODK Build.

Form building¶

Add a new prompt, by dragging the elements from the bottom of the screen onto the blank canvas.
You can remove a prompt by clicking on X sign on the prompt.

For each prompt, modify its properties on the right portion of the screen.

Prompts can also be rearranged through drag and drop.
You can collapse the question prompts by checking the Collapse Questions option in the View menu.

Information about prompts is displayed in the properties section.

Unchecking the Show Information option in the Help menu will hide the information which is displayed in properties section.

Upload forms to Aggregate¶

You can upload a form to Aggregate server by clicking on Upload Form to Aggregate… in the File menu. In the window which opens up, enter the url for your Aggregate server. In the username and password box, you need to enter your Aggregate account credentials with Form Manager or greater capabilities. The account type in Aggregate has to be ODK, not Google. You may leave these blank if your Aggregate instance allows anonymous form uploading.

Export forms¶

To view XML for your form, click on Export to XML… in the File menu. You can download the .xml file for your form by clicking on Download option in the output XML window.

You can download .xlsx file for your form by clicking on Export to XLSForm in the File menu.

Changing form properties¶

You can change the form properties by clicking Form Properties… in the Edit menu.

A form properties window will appear, where you can enter the instance name, public key and submission url for your form.

Instance name specifies names you want to give to submitted data. You can see more info on public key here. Submission url directs your submissions somewhere other than the Aggregate that supplied the form. This is the ODK Aggregate website url with Aggregate.html replaced by submission.

Tip

You can give an instance name which uses calculated expressions to name submissions based on submission data. Note that whatever you put in the instance name box should evaluate to a string.

For example, you might use a concatenation of a unique student ID (sid) with the student name (s_name) as the name of the filled-in form. So you can provide a instance name as : concat(${sid},' - ', ${s_name}).

This is implemented in XML as an instanceName field within the meta block. If this value is present and not an empty string (""), it will be used as the name of the filled-in form. Otherwise, the current default naming, based upon the date the form was first saved, will be used.

<instance>
  <data id="build_example1_1508999324">
    <meta>
      <instanceID/>
      <instanceName/>
    </meta>
    <s_name/>
    <sid/>
  </data>
</instance>

Add, remove and display new languages¶

You can add a new language for your form by clicking on Manage Translations… in the Edit menu.

When you add a new language, the language box will be displayed in the properties section of the form.

Image showing added language in properties section.

You can also remove any translation by clicking on remove option in the Translation box.

Image showing remove translation option.

You can change the display language for your form by checking the language you want to use as display language in the View menu.

Image showing display language selection.

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