Fully customizable You are in total control of shaping your database or survey. Many advanced features Such as branching logic, file uploading, and calculated fields. Ad hoc reporting.

Create custom queries for generating reports to view or download. Use a built-in project calendar and scheduling module for organizing your events and appointments. Easily manage a contact list of survey respondents or create a simple survey link. Build a list of email contacts, create custom email invitations, and track who responds.

Do not post links online unless you want people from around the world to fill out your survey! This is especially true if you are promising a reward like a gift card for completing the survey. Every action within a REDCap project is logged, including data changes, alerts and survey invites sent out, and even page views.

By going to the Logging page located in the left-hand column of a project , you can view logs sorted by event type, date range, record, and user. This is very useful for investigating data issues that come up, and logs are downloadable as. To see what data has been in a field, and what changes have been made over time, you can press the H button next to it to see the Field History.

This means that any data saved in a field is recoverable, even if accidentally overwritten. The only time when you can clear out the logs is when you choose to Move project to production. When a project is moved to production, you will have the option to maintain or delete existing records and logs; make sure to think through whether you need to keep any of your data before doing this!

Projects should always be moved to production after being thoroughly tested but before collecting real data — when you move a project to production, only test data should be in it. November If you are managing a project with many users, it is often a good idea to check the User Rights section to clean up those who no longer work on the project, and remove users whose accounts have been suspended due to leaving their institutions.

You should always know who has access to your project, and removing old users still maintains auditing logs of their work. To use it, simply click on the speech bubble symbol next to a field during data entry to leave a comment, or go to the Field Comment Log page in the left-hand column. As an alternative to field comments, under Additional Customizations in Project Setup , REDCap gives you the option to enable the Data Resolution Workflow , a powerful tool that allows users to flag data issues and track their resolution.

While more complicated to use than field comments, it allows you to easily track what issues are open and respond to them directly.

September Interested in using REDCap to create a remote, paper-free consent process for your study? Once enabled, participants will be able to provide certain information, including a signature, and review the form it before submitting it. Here, you can see who has access to your projects, request password resets, and request account extensions for external users those not from Tufts CTSI partner institutions.

If you believe your sponsor was set erroneously, or would like to reassign users for whom you are the sponsor for instance, delegating this role to a study manager , please contact us at informatics tuftsctsi. May Interested in modifying the appearance of surveys, or making them information-only?

Many customizations can be configured on a per-project or per-survey level for maximum flexibility. To activate this for your project, go to External Modules located in the left-hand column , press View Available Modules, and then click Request Activation.

For more details about how to use this module in your project check, please review these slides PDF. For an in-depth look at more features of the 9. This is a free, specialized app for cases where data must be collected without internet access; it cannot administer REDCap surveys. Collected data is manually synchronized with the main database when an internet connection is present.

January Do you want to personalize your project for the study team as well as for the participants? You can add your study logo to the top of a project in addition to the participant surveys. Whether changes in ASI and the checkbox will affect invitation already in the queue I don't know. Hence, please check before you use it in anger. If you make changes to piping, logic You may have to delete scheduled invites and reschedule.

And don't forget the reminders! They are not displayed by default. As long as this was done before they clicked on the link, they would not see the survey questions to answer. Yes, but it will only affect future invites. If you need to update the email field for already scheduled invites, you must delete the invites and reschedule. If I create a timestamp field, including hours, minutes, and days, can I create an automated survey invitation that will detect how many days it has been since the timestamp?

It's possible, but if you do this be aware that the server-side PHP datediff function always treats the 'today' keyword as being the first second of the day. If your timestamp value is at six pm , then an ASI checking the datediff on the same day as that timestamp will actually return a result of 0. On the next day it will return 0. On succeeding days it will return 1.

If a survey has already been completed, will the scheduler still send out survey invitations? There are a variety of reasons why survey invitations might be in the schedule to be sent even though a survey is already completed. The survey invite might have been both manually scheduled and automatically scheduled. The survey invite might have been scheduled but then the URL for the survey sent to the participant directly. Regardless, the scheduler will not send out a survey invitation for an already completed survey.

Do automated survey invitations preclude manual survey invitations? Automated survey invitations do not preclude manual survey invitations or vice versa. An automated survey invitation will not be scheduled if an automated survey invitation has previously been scheduled, but if an automated survey invitation's logic is checked and found to be true, a survey invitation will be scheduled regardless of whether or not a survey invitation has been previously scheduled manually.

Likewise, if an automated survey invitation has been scheduled, one can still schedule a survey invitation manually. How can I schedule a survey invitation to go out at a specific time? You can use a form of scheduling that allows you to specify next day, next Monday, etc. However that form of scheduling will not allow you to specify a lapse of a certain number of days. What mathematical operations can be used in the logic for Automated Survey Invitations?

Suppose you want to send a followup survey seven days after a surgery. You could define the condition of an automated survey invitation rule to detect that six days have passed since the surgery date and then schedule the survey invitation to be sent on the next day at noon. By checking for the sixth day instead of the seventh day, you gain the ability to set the specific time to send the invitation and you gain the opportunity to stop the sending of the invitation, if it turns out that you don't really want to send it.

You could, instead, check that one day has passed and then set the invitation to be sent six days later, but you would lose the ability to set the specific time that the invitation is sent.

When are automated survey invitations sent out? Automated Survey Invitations are survey invitations that are automatically scheduled for immediate or future sending when certain conditions are true. NOTE: In previous versions, conditions that used the "today" variable would require extra effort to make sure they were checked every day, but REDCap now detects and checks those conditions daily. The conditions are checked every twelve hours.

The specific times they are checked during the day varies from one instance of REDCap to the next and changes over time. If the invitation is scheduled to be sent in the future, and a piped variable is later changed before the scheduled invitation is sent, that change will NOT be included in the already scheduled invitation.

First, change the ASI so that no more reminders get scheduled. Then, one by one, delete the reminders from the Survey Invitation Log. Do participants with partially completed surveys receive the automated survey invitation reminders? Yes, participants will continue to receive automated survey reminders if they have not completed the survey or they have a partially completed survey response. What are Automated Survey Invitations? For any survey in your REDCap project, you may define your conditions for Automated Survey Invitations that will be sent out for a specified survey.

This is done on the Online Designer page. Automated survey invitations may be understood as a way to have invitations sent to your survey participants, but rather than sending or scheduling them manually via the Participant List, the invitations can be scheduled to be sent automatically i.

Yes, his can be done two different ways as seen below. This only works for the first page if it is a multi-page survey. This is because there is not a real opportunity to modify the survey links sent to participants via the Participants List because REDCap automatically sends them out as-is.

If you wish to pre-fill such information, it is highly recommended to use method 2 below. See the example below. The form's "method" must be "post" and its "action" must be the survey link URL. Each question you wish to pre-fill will be represented as a field in the form, in which the field's "name" attribute is the REDCap variable name and its value is the question value you wish to pre-fill on the survey page.

The form field may be an input, text area, or select field. The example below shows them all as hidden input fields, which could presumably have been loaded dynamically, and thus do not need to display their value.

In this example, the only thing that would be seen on the webpage is the "Pre-fill Survey" button. This module allows two project users or roles to be set as Data Entry Person 1 and Data Entry Person 2 using User Rights page , and allows them to create records with the same name and enter data for the same record without seeing one another's data.

It is sometimes recommended to use the Data Access Groups over the actual DDE module to implement a form of double data entry.

The advantages of using DAGs include allowing an unlimited number of users to be in a group and enter data, to utilize the Data Import Tool, and to access all Applications pages.

So if it is necessary for a third party "reviewer" to merge the two records into a third record, then in that case the DDE module would be advantageous over using DAGs. When exporting records or viewing a report from a double data entry DDE project, the exported record set will, by default, include three records for every merged record the first user's entry, the second user's entry, and the merged record.

To limit the exported viewed records to only the final merged version of each record, follow these steps:. Is it possible copy the Data Resolution Workflow queries into a new project when copying a project?

Are the Field Comments logged? The Data Export tool includes instructions for linking the exported syntax and data files. Note that SPSS has several variable naming conventions:.

Then take the following actions. The method used for calculating the percentile values is the same algorithm utilized by both R its default method - type 7 and Microsoft Excel. How can I ensure that the leading zeros of numbers entered into text fields are retained when the data is exported?

Excel will discard the leading zeros if you open your export file in Excel. The leading zeros will be retained if you open the file in Notepad. Rather than opening the file directly in Excel you should open the data into Excel and specify that the column with the leading zeros is a text column. The use of OpenOffice. CALC will ask you for a character set every time you open a. Choose "unicode utf-8 " from the options listed. How do I export my entire data set? Then follow the prompts.

Can I restrict access to a custom report? You can customize access based on individual users and data access groups. The data import template, available on the Data Import Tool page, will contain the appropriate form status variable name for your project forms. Form status is imported as dropdown field type coded as.

Data cannot be directly imported into calculated fields. If you are importing data to a field you have set up to calculate a value, follow these steps:. REDCap can auto-number records during the data import process.

You will also need to provide a placeholder value as the record ID in the import file. Each individual record will need a unique placeholder value for the import to be successful.

Once data is downloaded from REDCap to a device ex: computer, laptop, mobile device , the user is responsible for that data. The following example will illustrate the distinction that was made above. Let's say that users 1 and 2 have identical data entry roles.

In this situation the Create and Edit Record rights would be assigned to both users. This can be done by assigning User1 into the access group1 and User2 to the access group2. Who can unlock a record? Can I restrict a user from viewing certain fields?

This will prevent the user from viewing the entire form. You cannot selectively prevent a user from viewing certain fields within a form. How can I give someone access to my project? Assign permissions and save changes. No, you can not lock an event.

You can lock a record's form and you can lock all forms across all events the entire record. The REDCap password for users in the table-based authentication mode must be at least 9 characters in length and must consist of at least one lower-case letter, one upper-case letter, and one number. The log files will stay intact when a user is removed from the project or suspended.

Even if the user is completed removed from the entire REDCap installation which requires a REDCap Administrator , the log file will still reflect the actions performed by that user.

What functions can be used in Data Quality custom rules? The Data Quality module can perform many advanced functions for custom rules that users create. What mathematical operations can be used in the logic for Data Quality rules? The Data Quality module allows you to find discrepancies in your project data. You can create your own custom rules that REDCap will execute to determine if a specific data value is discrepant or not. Your custom rules can include mathematical operations and also advanced functions listed below to provide you with a great amount of power for validating your project data.

You can also activate the real time execution of your custom rules to continually ensure the data integrity of your project. Advanced functions can be used in the logic. A complete list of ALL available functions is listed below. NOTE: These functions are very similar - and in some cases identical - to functions that can be used for calculated fields and branching logic. You may use IF statements i. Yes, for example, you can indicate "age" as: rounddown datediff "today",[dob],"y".

This is the same as in calc fields. This will change the meaning of the data already entered and you will have to re-enter responses for those records to ensure accuracy. REDCap will flag this as:. The best thing to do when making field choice changes for radiobuttons, checkboxes or dropdowns is to leave the current response choices as is and start with the next available code.

If you re-code like this, after the changes are committed any options selected for "1, red" will change to "1, blue"; "2, yellow" to "2, green"; "3, blue" to "3, orange". In general you can assume that only the data that is tied to the deleted events is affected and that there will be no adverse impact on the data that has been entered for the remaining events.

However there could be an impact on this data if you are using branching logic or calculations across events. What happens to the data in an ongoing longitudinal project if I delete some of the events?

The data which was tied to the deleted events will not be erased. Does the project go offline until the changes are approved? Can new surveys and records still be added to the project? The project does not go offline during the change request process. All the functionality remains the same so you can continue adding and updating records as needed while the changes are pending.

For radiobutton, checkbox and dropdown fields, can I delete response options? Deleting radiobutton or dropdown choices does not change the data saved to the database, but it deletes the ability to select that option. To make changes after you have moved your project to Production, first download the current Data Dictionary so that you can revert to the current version, if necessary, if something goes wrong with making changes.

After making your changes, you can review them by clicking on "view a detailed summary of all drafted changes" hyperlink at the top of the page.

REDCap will flag any changes that may negatively impact your data with the following critical warnings in red:. If anything is questionable or flagged as critical, you may receive an email from the Administrator with this information to confirm that you really want to make the change.

Certain changes to the structure of the database, such as deleting events in a longitudinal project can only be done by the REDCap Administrator. What are the risks of modifying a database that is already in Production?

Altering a database that is in Production can cause data loss and challenges to your data analysis. It is acceptable to add choices to a dropdown, radio, or checkbox field; however adding an option or even an entire field may present other analytical challenges. For example, if a response option is added, it is added to all instruments for all records.

One must either consider their results in light of the instrument contents at the time of data capture or one must be careful to avoid making conclusions which would be affected by the change to the instrument. Versioning your instruments and tracking changes over time is recommended.

Use the Project Revision History to confirm changes and revisions. For radiobutton, checkbox and dropdown fields, can I add response options without impacting my data? Adding new choices has no data impact to data entered. New choices will be added and display on all records. NOTE: Adding new response choices to a question does make it a slightly different question and, for that reason alone, could impact the integrity and analysis of your data.

It is a new "version" of the question. REDCap has the capability to make voice calls and send SMS text messages to survey respondents by using a third-party web service named Twilio www. In this way, you could invite a participant to take a survey by sending them an SMS message or by calling them on their phone. There are many different options available for how you can invite participants and how they can take your surveys, either as a voice call survey or as an SMS conversation.

For those not using Twilio, there are many providers that let you convert an email into an SMS. You have to register your email address with them for billing, then you construct your messages using a particular pattern, e. To: provider. This mechanism would work fine from within REDCap - even for automated invitations - although the built-in text containing the survey link may not be particularly nice in an SMS.

The first step in accessing the API for any project is to check if you have the appropriate user rights in the project in order to use the API.

Secondly, you will need to request an API token. Please note: you will need to request a different API token for each project.

You can run the method in your browser to see what type of response you'll get. You can copy and paste your chosen language code into your preferred scripting tool and run it there. We recommend the R program for demo purposes: it's free, light weight and will run on both Windows and Mac environments.

The Data Entry Trigger is an advanced feature. For example, if you wish to log the activity of records being modified over time by a remote system outside REDCap, you can use this to do so.

Another use case might be if you're using the API data export to keep another system's data in sync with data in a REDCap project, in which the Data Entry Trigger would allow you to keep them exactly in sync by notifying your triggered script to pull any new data from at the moment it is saved in REDCap this might be more optimal and accurate than running a cron job to pull the data every so often from REDCap.

NOTE: If the names of your records i. SSN, MRN, name , for security reasons, it is highly recommended that you use an encrypted connection i. Can we share one device and have multiple users access the app?

Each user will have a unique PIN for access. However, each app user maintains unique project copies on the device not shared. An app user will collect data separately from anyone else even if on same device, same project.

Data is consolidated when it is synced to the online server. What is the remote lockout feature? Remote lockout: If a user sets up a REDCap project on the mobile app, and then another user revokes their "REDCap Mobile App" user privileges on the User Rights page in that project, then it will prevent them from accessing it on their mobile device by locking them out of that particular project.

In this way, you may perform "remote lockout" to further protect data stored on mobile devices. What is the User Right: "Allow user to download data for all records to the app? There is an additional user privilege "Allow user to download data for all records to the app?

This may be done to prevent users from unwittingly or wittingly downloading lots of sensitive data to their mobile device. If a user is given this privilege, then when they initialize the project in the app and the project contains at least one record, then the app will prompt the user to choose if they wish to download all the records to the app or not.

How can I access the Mobile App? Before users can use the mobile app for a project, they must first be given "Mobile App" User Right. This module must be enabled system-wide for your REDCap instance. Once you have rights you'll be able to see the "REDCap Mobile App" link on the project's left-hand menu and then be able to access that page, which will provide links to download the Android and iOS app and instructions for initializing that project in the app on their mobile device. Note: When a user creates a new project, they will automatically be given "Mobile App" privileges by default.

Can this app be used to collect data directly from participants? A REDCap login is required to use the app. The app therefore cannot be downloaded by participants, to their own personal devices.

However, REDCap users can secure instruments on their own devices and let a participant use it temporarily, for direct data collection. In this way, participants only have the option to enter data to that instrument and not use the rest of the app. There are several factors to consider when designing a project which will use the REDCap Mobile App, including but not limited to:.

When the user has collected some data in the app and wishes to send the data back to the server, they will go to the "Send data to server" page in the app. If new record id's are needed, they are assigned values for auto-numbered projects. Modifications to existing records are adjudicated, one record at a time. They can be reassigned to a new record id or merged with an existing record.

The user is allowed to inspect them at the record- and field-level, and then send to the server after review. For instance, if the project uses record auto-numbering, and a record already exists on the server with the same record name, then it will let the user know that it will rename the record accordingly during the sync process in order to prevent any overwriting of the record already on the server.

If there are any possible issues that might arise when sending the data to the server, the app will prompt the user to make a decision before sending the data. There are many different scenarios that can occur in which a user might be prompted to make a decision, and the app is fully capable of providing the user with just the right amount of guidance so that they feel confident sending their data to the server with no issues.

The REDCap Mobile App is an app that is installed on a tablet or mobile device so that data can be collected offline on that device. Data collected offline is later synced i. Once a user is given 'REDCap Mobile App' privileges in a project, they can navigate to the Mobile App page on the left-hand menu and set up the project inside the app on their device. Once the project is set up on the device, the user can collect data which is stored locally on the device.

If you are having problems accessing REDCap, please try logging out and logging back in. If you are still unable to login, please contact your MDH program representative. If you are having problems accessing a specific project, please contact that program area directly.

If you already have a MDH REDCap account for one project and are being added to an additional project or projects, your existing username and password will still work. You will have one login screen and all of your projects will be listed on the My Projects tab. If your REDCap account has expired but you believe you continue to need access to a specific project, please contact that MDH program area and they can help reinstate your account.

User accounts should not be shared between staff.