New version of REDCap released July 20 includes new features and improvements

On Thursday, July 20, 2017, the CTS-IT will upgrade REDCap from version 7.3.6 to 7.5.1. You can expect a downtime for REDCap from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. while we complete the upgrade. The new version of the software includes one new feature and some improvements/updates to existing features. The most exciting new feature is an option for survey respondents to download a PDF copy of their survey responses for themselves once they have submitted a survey. For feature improvements/updates, some of the most helpful include:

  • When using newly created data fields for branching logic while in Draft Mode, that have not yet been submitted, REDCap would display an ‘Error in Syntax’ message for the branching logic that involved the new fields until the newly created fields were submitted and approved in Draft Mode
  • Improved scheduling and calendar modules that are more record/subject specific
  • An improved interface for the Survey Invitation Log page
  • More detailed field validation error messages when the entered data does not match the specified format

Read full descriptions of these new and improved features:

New feature:

  • PDF download for survey respondents – On an instrument’s Survey Settings page, a user may enable the option “Allow participants to download a PDF of their responses at end of survey?”. This option will display a button for the survey participant to download a PDF file of their responses for the survey they just completed. Users may also download this same copy of the PDF since it has been added as a new PDF download option at the top of data entry forms.

Feature updates:

  •  When entering branching logic in the “Add/Edit Branching Logic” popup on the Online Designer, if the project is in production and in Draft Mode, then it would mistakenly report “Error in syntax” if the logic contains a variable name that is on a new instrument that exists in Draft Mode but not in the production version of the project. When using the drag-n-drop option in the “Add/Edit Branching Logic”, the operator drop-down was missing “<>” as an option.
  •  When designating instruments for events on a longitudinal project’s “Designate Instruments for My Events” page, normal users will no longer be able to undesignated an instrument from an event if the project is in production (REDCap administrators will still be allowed to do this though). This is to protect users from mistakenly un-designating instruments after collecting data in production, which would orphan the data.

Improvements:

  • For longitudinal projects with multiple arms that utilize repeating instruments, if a record exists on more than one arm, the Record Home Page would mistakenly display the repeating instruments tables from other arms for that record. This will no longer occur.
  • If a record has any calendar events (included scheduled events) that will occur in the next 7 days, it will display a button above the table on the Record Home Page. The button will note how many calendar events there are for the current record in the next 7 days, and when clicked, it will display the next 7 days’ worth of calendar events in agenda mode view.
  • If a record has any survey invitations that are scheduled to be sent in the next 7 days, it will display a button above the table on the Record Home Page. The button will note how many upcoming invites are scheduled for the current record in the 7 days, and when clicked, it will display a table of the send time and survey title for the next 7 days’ worth of scheduled invites.
  • Invitation reminders are now displayed by default in the Survey Invitation Log. In previous versions, the “Display invitation reminders?” checkbox would have to be checked in order to see the reminders. Not initially seeing the reminders would cause some users to mistakenly assume that nothing was scheduled.
  • The generic field validation error message (“The value you provided could not be validated because it does not follow the expected format. Please try again.”) has been improved, in which it now additionally displays “Required format:” and the name of the field validation (e.g., “Datetime (D-M-Y H:M)”) in the error prompt so that there is no ambiguity about what the format should be.
  • Added an optimized version of the cron job that checks all conditional logic in Automated Surveys Invitations that use “today” inside a datediff() function.