Incomplete submissions using SurveyCTO Collect
Incomplete submissions are form submissions collected via SurveyCTO Collect that have reached your SurveyCTO server without their associated media attachments – images, videos, audio recordings, or audio audits. This usually happens because of a poor-quality Internet connection while SurveyCTO Collect is uploading data.
There is generally no cause for concern: your text-based data has been received in full, and SurveyCTO Collect will keep trying to send the media attachments. In other words, the data collector successfully submitted the completed form, but the media attachments are still in transit.
Identifying incomplete submissions on SurveyCTO Collect
Most incomplete-submission warnings resolve themselves as SurveyCTO Collect retries the upload – and the chance of success is higher over a better Internet connection. On the device, the enumerator will see the message "The submission was not complete, please retry." when a full submission could not be sent back to the server.
You may see incomplete-submission warnings at the top of the console during data collection or in the list of forms on the Monitor tab. This appears only after several upload attempts from SurveyCTO Collect have failed, and it clears by itself once the submission eventually arrives in full. Note: you must have at least Form and Data Manager permissions in the server console in order to see these warnings. See Managing user roles for the different types of user roles in SurveyCTO.
Managing incomplete submissions
You have two ways to handle an incomplete submission:
Accept it as-is, without the attached media files. The submission is marked as complete and included in your data exports, but the missing media files will not be recoverable through SurveyCTO afterwards. Only do this if the media files are not important and having the data sooner matters more.
Wait and submit the record in full. Try to find a better-quality Internet connection over which to complete the upload. Incomplete submissions remain listed under Send Finalized Form in SurveyCTO Collect until they have been sent in full.
Until you accept an incomplete submission – or it is eventually submitted in full – it is not yet part of your data, so it will not appear in your exports or in the Data Explorer, and you cannot open the record to help you decide. The only information available is what the incomplete-submission warning shows on the server, which does not identify the device the submission came from. The data becomes viewable only once you accept the submission as incomplete or it is submitted in full.
Reducing the size of attached media
Audio audits and photos are the two most common media attachments, and there are ways to keep them small:
Audio audits: be sparing about how much of an interview you record. You can include several audio audit fields to capture several short chunks rather than one long recording.
Photos: in SurveyCTO Collect, open General Settings and choose an Image size option so the app compresses images before sending them to the server.
Both measures reduce how often incomplete-submission warnings occur.
Further troubleshooting
SurveyCTO supports data collection that takes place mostly or entirely offline, which can also help reduce incomplete submissions. (See Operating more fully offline (without the Internet) for full details.) In brief, SurveyCTO Desktop running on a computer – together with a travel router providing an Internet-disconnected Wi-Fi network – can act as a local server. Data, including media attachments, can be submitted to that local computer, eliminating connection-related problems with sending data to your SurveyCTO server.
Occasionally a form generates a media file too large to submit to the server – for example, using an audio audit to record an entire interview (which we don't recommend). Files at or above the maximum attachment size cannot be submitted directly to your SurveyCTO server; use the fully-offline workflow above to recover such large attachments. See Limitations of SurveyCTO for the current attachment-size limits.
