I'm building FormsOffline
Privacy first physical to digital forms converter
Live link (completely free and offline): https://deekshithvodela.github.io/FormsOffline/
Github Repo (opensource): https://github.com/deekshithvodela/formsoffline
Ideation
I encountered a unique situation where researchers refuse to use google forms to collect data of cross-sectional studies or questionnaire based studies because they don’t want google to process that confidential information. I personally don’t mind using google forms but there are researchers who prefer to collect data with physical paper forms and manually enter that data in excel sheets from these physical forms.
At first it seemed like a method that should have become rudimentary by now, but it does have its perks, i.e., preserving privacy and confidentiality of the information about participants of the study.
So I decided to make a local offline web app called Forms Offline which works offline and stores data on local device like your phone, desktop, pc, etc. The data is completely processed and stored on your device. Nothing is uploaded anywhere online. This eliminates the fear of disclosing or leaking the data of the participants due to online processing of the data.
Why did I make this as a forms interface? Actually, I couldn't find any other efficient way to record data. I specifically chose this because, filling forms is way more convenient than filling excel sheet rows. Filling forms reduces error of entering data in the wrong columns by mistake and reduces repetitive typing of same options again and again. This can be solved by making a drop-down or multiple choice options on the forms.
Maybe there is a more efficient way, but until then I’m gonna stick with this form filling strategy.
How to use FormsOffline?
Dashboard
Well, the workflow is easy. The Dashboard has a list of all the form templates you created, imported or duplicated from already available forms.
If you already have form created in other forms apps like the google forms, microsoft forms, etc, you can directly duplicate them with the import from link button on the dashboard. You can also build your template from scratch by clicking Create New Form button.
Form Builder
The Form Builder section is equipped with tools to create your form. It has most of the types of questions like the short paragraph, check boxes, multiple choices, file uploads, taking photos directly, digital signature, etc.
The taking photos directly can be especially useful if you are converting physical paper forms into digital data and would prefer to take a photo of that form so that you can have the flexibility to verify the data later instead of looking for that piece of paper in the stack.
The digital signature is useful if you are taking the consent of the participant for the study and would like to collect their signature.
The file upload question type doesn’t really upload any file anywhere on the internet. It just links the file on your device with the response so that you can preview that file in the CMS or export it as a Zip file later. Everything is 100% locally processed on your device and privacy is 100% protected.
It also has sections and jumping to sections based on the response of particular question feature too.
After you are done with creating your form template, just click on save template and it gets added to your dashboard.
Rapid Entry
Rapid Entry is for collecting data based on the form template you made with the builder. This is a zero resistance section that allows you to collect data quickly and seamlessly.
Dataset Content Management System CMS
This is the place you get to visualise all the data you entered in the rapid entry section. The data is displayed as a table.
The feature I love in this section is that you can preview images, PDFs, and docs uploaded through rapid entry directly in the CMS interface. You don’t need a separate app to preview your submissions and cross check if you uploaded the correct files. And yes, if you did mess up, you can easily fix it with the edit button. AND, all these edits will have an audit trail to track what was changed and when it was change. Of course it also has a delete button to delete and enter a clean response without any audit trail.
THE Data CONSOLIDATOR
I believe in collaborative workflows as the most efficient ones. I wanted to ship this app so that multiple people can work on the same template.
You create a template in the builder, you export the template file from the dashboard or the Consolidator section. You share that template with your team. The team members import the template. The team works with the same template to collect data or convert the physical form data into digital data.
After collection is done, each individual will export the data from the dashboard or the consolidator sections. The supervisor or any member on the team will collect all the data files. import in the consolidator section. Voila, the app will now integrate all these files into a single file. it will also check for duplicate entries and merge them if they have the same entry hash(this is unique to each entry).
There are two ways to export data. The classic excel sheets for all the text only responses.
The Zip file package if you used file uploads, photos or digital signatures which need you to export the excel sheet of the responses text data along with all these files.
Help
This section has comprehensive and detailed information about each section.
Install as Web app
There is something known as progressive web app (PWA). This allows users to install a website as an application so that they can access the website in the full screen mode without the browser search bar, and easily accessible from the home menu.
You can easily install FormsOffline as a PWA by clicking the install button besides the dark mode/ light mode toggle button.
Setting up user name
You can set up your user name in the user name section right besides the disk storage consumption statistic. This user name along with your device identification hash is exported with your form data. This is to track the author of a response in the consolidated files. I included this to enforce accountability and back tracing of the authors.
Room for improvement Future plan
One disadvantage is it can’t be distributed to remote users and participants online like the google forms. There is a work around to it, you can host it on your own server to collect details remotely and securely. This is technically possible but hosting your forms online on your own servers is expensive and if done by unprofessionals, it puts the data at the risk of getting hacked.
There is another work around to this disadvantage though. The answer was quite simple. I can just make a template of the form and send it via end to end encrypted messaging platforms. The person will import this template, fill the form and export the filled data file. Send this data file back through an end to end encrypted messaging platform.
This indeed is not favourable to collect individual data remotely but would work great if its for collecting data of a group of 3 or more participants.
!! If you delete browser data of the website or uninstall the browser, the entire data of the forms and responses will be deleted.
To remove this dependency, I’m planning to develop a standalone android and ios apps.
Scope of using this tool
This is not a mere physical to digital data conversion tool. It is a fully functional forms tool. You can use it in numerous ways forms are used to collect data.
Ranging from simple consent collection to maintaining patient records as a EHR (Electronic Health Records) in resource limited settings, to track and triage your in-patients offline. This app ensures to protect the privacy of the data as every thing is stored offline and never uploaded anywhere on the internet.
Small and Medium scale business owners can track inventory and many other things with this app.
PS: Click all the buttons and explore the full potential of the app. Feel free to write feedback in the comments!
Whats that one way you would probably use this tool for? drop your answer in the comments.
thanks for reading!