New Geoshape and Geotrace widgets

Martijn van de Rijdt, 22 May 2014

[edit July 2nd 2014: these widgets have now been further extended with multiple map layers]

You can now record geotraces and geoshapes in Enketo Smart Paper. Click the screenshot below to check out a sample form right away.

Screenshot of Geo Widgets Sample Form

Geopoint, Geotrace, and Geoshape

Enketo Smart Paper now supports 3 different geo widgets that work on both mobile devices and desktops:

  1. geopoint: to record a single geopoint
  2. geotrace: to record a line or polyline or multiple geo points
  3. geoshape: to record a polygon of multiple geo points - the last point is the same as the first point

All geowidgets allow 3 different methods of data entry: detection, manual input and map-based input.

How to use

Simply use the new types in your XLSForm. It is currently supported in Ona and the latest version of ODK Aggregate. It should be supported in the forthcoming version of SurveyCTO and Formhub as well. The widget has been added to the open-source enketo-core library which means all tools built around Enketo (core) can make use of it.

Collaboration

The development of this widget was a great example of collaboration between ODK and Enketo. As a result, the new geo-types will work with the ODK tools. For now ODK Collect will show a text input for geotrace and geoshape types, but a proper widget is being developed by a third party. I would like to thank Mitch and the ODK team for their significant contribution by adding the required behind-the-scenes support to JavaRosa, ODK Validate and XLSForm.

The brand new Enketo Smart Paper widget was sponsored by the good folks at iMMAP for use with the iMMAP-developed twine framework. It’s great to see Enketo is becoming more and more the tool of choice for Humanitarian Aid organizations - its key target group! I’ll post about some other exciting developments regarding Enketo’s continuing adoption by the humanitarian aid community shortly.

Feedback

As always, we’d love to get your feedback. Comment on this blog, tweet @enketo, or post a message in the Enketo forum. If you discover a bug, please let us know what browser you are using.