Question on collecting data from a group

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LibreEndUser
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Question on collecting data from a group

Post by LibreEndUser »

I have done a search of the forum with terms that I thought might be relevant, but the results were not actually relevant. I apologize if I failed to identify the proper search terms.

I would like to be able to collect data from a group of people. I understand that LibreOffice can create forms that connect to Base. Perhaps it can do so for Calc as well. (I am not sure that I need Base for my purposes, but the searching I did seemed to result in posts concerning Base and mentioning Calc.)

I would like to be able to create a document that people could fill out. I would like to make that document available to the group of people. (Perhaps email the document to them or allow them to grab it themselves from google drive or some other source. Maybe just a common source, like taking it from an app all group members have access to download it from.) I would like to collect their responses as smoothly as possible.
  • Can I share a form and have the recipient's completion of the form collect the data for me? Meaning, I would look at a completed Base file or something and would not myself need to look at or handle their form.

    Can I share a form and have the recipients return the form to me after they have completed it... and then dump the responses to the form in a Base file? This requires someone to look at or handle their form in some way to get the responses in the Base file.
What I do not want to do is require the recipient of the complete forms have to actually do the data entry themselves. That would mean I didn't have to create a form of some kind, I could just have people send the data back in an email and have the recipient do the data entry.

I appreciate your time and any assistance.
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MrProgrammer
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Re: Question on collecting data from a group

Post by MrProgrammer »

Hi, and welcome to the forum.
LibreEndUser wrote:I would like to be able to collect data from a group of people.
Comparison of survey software
Mr. Programmer
AOO 4.1.7 Build 9800, MacOS 13.6.3, iMac Intel.   The locale for any menus or Calc formulas in my posts is English (USA).
LibreEndUser
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Re: Question on collecting data from a group

Post by LibreEndUser »

MrProgrammer wrote:Hi, and welcome to the forum.
Thank you.
  • Are you saying that the services in the list provided in your link can do what I am asking but not LibreOffice? This means that further questions here are irrelevant as LibreOffice cannot do what I am after.

    Are you saying that the services in the list provided in your link can do what I am asking more easily than LibreOffice? This still leaves room for asking about how LibreOffice would do it.
Thanks for any and all replies to these or my original questions in the first post.
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Villeroy
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Re: Question on collecting data from a group

Post by Villeroy »

I would guess that the list of survey software has nothing to do with LibreOffice. It is a list of software which is tailored around this particular task.

Where is your group? Same home network, company network, anywhere on the internet?
How big is that group? Dozends, thousands, millions?
How trustworthy is that group in respect to the data you are collecting? Is it about gaming, gambling, club membership, life insurance, health care, sex?
What can you tell about their computer skills and software? Do they all run Libre/OpenOffice or is the existance of an internet browser all you can presume?

Of course you could use a LibreOffice form if everybody in that group has LibreOffice or OpenOffice to fill out that form and if you have some kind of database server on a network which is accessible to all group members. They fill out the database form and the form is submitted to your database server. This should work fine in a company where all use the same software on the same network. But are you able to set up a database? This is development work, nothing for people who call themselves "LibreEndUser".

Of course, it would be preferable if they could fill out a form in their internet browser. This is how this forum works when you submit a posting. The posting is stored in a databsae. However, this is somewheat "high tech" and requires a lot of preparation for dozends users as for a million users. I guess that some of the linked survey software has prepared solutions for all this if you are willing to store your group's data on other people's servers.

If you can presume a certain level of computer skills, just send them a spreadsheet and write a macro program to aggregate all the incoming sheets into one data table which can be analysed. Or simply do manual copy and paste which is a lot faster than writing a macro program if we are talking about a group of hundreds.
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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Re: Question on collecting data from a group

Post by LibreEndUser »

Villeroy wrote:Where is your group? Same home network, company network, anywhere on the internet?
How big is that group? Dozends, thousands, millions?
How trustworthy is that group in respect to the data you are collecting? Is it about gaming, gambling, club membership, life insurance, health care, sex?
What can you tell about their computer skills and software? Do they all run Libre/OpenOffice or is the existance of an internet browser all you can presume?
Thank you for your reply.

The group would be spread out and would likely be measured in the dozens initially. I cannot imagine it would ever be measured in thousands. This is not for a commercial purpose so we are not all coworkers. I don't foresee collecting data that anyone would be particularly concerned about. No health or financial information, etc. The group would all be people comfortable with the internet. I am comfortable requiring people to have LibreOffice if that is required to make the whole thing work.
Villeroy wrote:Of course you could use a LibreOffice form if everybody in that group has LibreOffice or OpenOffice to fill out that form and if you have some kind of database server on a network which is accessible to all group members. They fill out the database form and the form is submitted to your database server. This should work fine in a company where all use the same software on the same network. But are you able to set up a database? This is development work, nothing for people who call themselves "LibreEndUser".
I apologize if my username is inappropriate. I only thought it was both humorous and descriptive. I do not consider myself a power user as should be obvious by my need to ask this question. I am however willing to take a little time to learn something, which my posting here hopefully reinforces.

Now, it may be that my skills are insufficient to accomplish my goals. That would be an acceptable result of my inquiry. So, lets see if that is the case.

It seems that as a threshold issue I need access to a server available to the group over the internet. What is the easiest resolution of that problem? What is the most common resolution of that problem? A google drive? Something else?

Next, I would need to be able to set up a database. I have never done so and my initial post indicates that I was uncertain whether I would require Base or whether Calc might be sufficient. However, if a database is required then the question is whether I can learn what it takes to do so? Again, if it is something that I will not be able to do (perhaps it requires that I learn to program in some archaic computer language) then that is a valuable take away from my inquiry here.
Villeroy wrote:Of course, it would be preferable if they could fill out a form in their internet browser. This is how this forum works when you submit a posting. The posting is stored in a databsae. However, this is somewheat "high tech" and requires a lot of preparation for dozends users as for a million users. I guess that some of the linked survey software has prepared solutions for all this if you are willing to store your group's data on other people's servers.
I imagine that this "high tech" solution is more difficult than the database on a shared network solution you began with. As such, I'll just leave this one alone on the assumption that I should tackle the easier method if I am going to tackle anything at all.
:D
Villeroy wrote:If you can presume a certain level of computer skills, just send them a spreadsheet and write a macro program to aggregate all the incoming sheets into one data table which can be analysed. Or simply do manual copy and paste which is a lot faster than writing a macro program if we are talking about a group of hundreds.
So, this was my initial thought and I posted here in an attempt to ascertain whether I might benefit from trying something else. If in fact I cannot do something that automates some of that process (or if the effort to learn how turns out to be too onerous) then I expect that I will rely on this process. So, I guess the good news is that somehow progress will be made... All that is left is to determine how to proceed.

Thanks again for the reply. I hope my detailed response is helpful in framing future responses.
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Villeroy
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Re: Question on collecting data from a group

Post by Villeroy »

See attached spreadsheet document.
Column A gets your questions.
Column B is for the answers.
The file should be named after the interviewee.

With a most simple layout like this you can use my template Merge sheets of spreadsheet documents which merges all spreadsheets in a given directoy adding the the file name to the first column of the merged list. This is all you need to analyse all answers from all interviewees.
The merged list will look like:

File | Question | Answer
-------------------------------------
Fred.ods | Name | Fred
Fred.ods | Age | 35
... | ... | ...
Lara.ods | Name | Lara
Lara.ods | Age | 39
... | ... | ...
Attachments
interview.ods
(11.21 KiB) Downloaded 199 times
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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Re: Question on collecting data from a group

Post by LibreEndUser »

Villeroy wrote:See attached spreadsheet document.
Column A gets your questions.
Column B is for the answers.
The file should be named after the interviewee.

With a most simple layout like this you can use my template Merge sheets of spreadsheet documents which merges all spreadsheets in a given directoy adding the the file name to the first column of the merged list. This is all you need to analyse all answers from all interviewees.
Thank you for this information concerning your suggestion to exchange spreadsheets. I will look it over.

While, on the whole, my questions posted above remain unanswered I appreciate the time taken to submit the posts by the users above. Thank you.
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gkick
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Re: Question on collecting data from a group

Post by gkick »

@LibreEndUser

Hi,

There is an example of how to import pdf data into Lo on
https://www.familiegrosskopf.de/robert/ ... _beispiele

look for the Beispiel_PDFFormular_Import_Hsqldb zipfile.
The site is in German, just use google translate. Maybe that's a solution.
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Villeroy
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Re: Question on collecting data from a group

Post by Villeroy »

gkick wrote:look for the Beispiel_PDFFormular_Import_Hsqldb zipfile.
This is a very interesting proof of concept which requires 3rd party software "pdftk" and a lot of experience with form design.
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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Re: Question on collecting data from a group

Post by LibreEndUser »

gkick wrote:@LibreEndUser

Hi,

There is an example of how to import pdf data into Lo on
https://www.familiegrosskopf.de/robert/ ... _beispiele

look for the Beispiel_PDFFormular_Import_Hsqldb zipfile.
The site is in German, just use google translate. Maybe that's a solution.
Thank you for your reply. I appreciate your assistance.
LibreEndUser
As of 23 June 2021: LibreOffice Version: 7.1.3.2 (x64) / OS: Windows 10.0
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