Resources
Downloading Data
The slides presented on this page demonstrate how summary data or a subset of data submitted can be downloaded for analysis offline. See Manage Forms for directions on how to download all the data submitted for a form. Note that data is always downloaded in the JSON format. Where there is a need to have this data in the Excel format the CCA Desktop tool is used to convert the JSON data to an Excel file. This conversion process is discussed in Slide 6.
- All active Admin users with the View Data role set.
- tAll active users with the Analyst designation if the form is not assigned to a team.
- All active users with the Analyst designation that belong to the same team as the form if the form is assigned to a team.
See Manage Users for more information on user privileges, roles and team assignment. Also see Manage Forms for information on restricting form access to members of a specific team. Finally, the Data Analysis page gives directions on how to query form data.
Slide 1
Let’s assume the analyst wishes to download rather than display the average population count for the year 1950, 2000 and 2050 for the country of Germany. The analyst will proceed thus:
(1) On the Dashboard select the Data Analysis -> Aggregates/Chart Based Analysis.
(2) Select the City Census form in the Primary Form dropdown box.
(3) Select the City field in the Group By Field dropdown box.
(4) In the Form Fields section check the following: Average (Population 1950), Average (Population 2000) and Average (Population 2050).
(5) Click on the Filter icon.
(6) Filter the summary results by the country of Germany as shown in the image above.
(7) Continue on the next slide.
Slide 2
(1) Select the More -> Download as JSON menu.
(2) Note that clicking the Download as Excel file directs the user on how to convert downloaded files to Excel using the CCA Desktop app.
(3) Continue on the next slide.
Slide 3
If results are available based on the filter then a download link is presented to the analyst. Click on the link to download a zipped file containing a JSON schema and a JSON dump file. The schema file describes the structure of the dump file which contains the actual data. This dump file can be used directly in applications that understand the popular JSON format. The process of converting the JSON dump to an Excel file is presented in Slide 6.
Slide 4
Apart from downloading data summaries, an analyst can also download a subset of data submitted by the data collectors. For instance, the analyst could download records for submitted data for only cities whose population count in 1950 exceed 2000 or all records for the country of Germany only.
For the purpose of this demonstration, assume that the analyst wishes to download only submitted data pertaining to the country of Germany. If this is the case, the following steps will suffice:
(1) From the Dashboard click the Data Analysis -> Download Data Subset menu.
(2) In the Forms section select the City Census form.
(3) Click the Filter icon and set the filter to the country of Germany as was done in Slide 1.
(4) Click the Download as JSON icon.
(5) Continue on the next slide.
Slide 5
Click the link presented to download the data subset. As with Slide 3, two files are contained within the Zipped file downloaded. Continue on the next slide to see how easy it is to convert the JSON data to an Excel file.
Slide 6
To convert the downloaded JSON data to Excel take the following steps.
(1) Unzip the download JSON files and ensure that two files with the right postfix exist i.e., -dump.json and -schema.json.
(2) Start the CCA Desktop app.
(3) Click on the Dump to Excel menu item on the left of the screen.
(4) Add the two JSON files contained in the downloaded zipped folder as depicted in the image above. Note that both files are required for this operation.
(5) Click the Upload button. The duration of the conversion process will depend on the number of records being converted.
(6) Once this conversion operation finishes, a download link for the zipped excel file is presented. Click on the link and save the file to a folder or directory of choice.
(7) This lesson is now complete.