I need to archive some forms -- and have it them not appear in form exports!

[Eric Stephan]

Hi all --

A user submitted a number of forms that they should not have submitted.  

I have been planning to use the "archive forms" feature to effectively delete these forms.

But I was just reading the documentation about "archive forms" ... https://confluence.dimagi.com/display/commcarepublic/Archive+Forms

And the page has this text: "Archiving a form will remove the data collected in the erroneous form from your case data and reports. The archived forms will still be displayed in saved exports, but not other exports."

This worries me a lot -- I'm not quite sure what 'saved exports' means. we get our most important data exports from the regular "EXPORT FORMS" feature.  And of course the exports that I do were indeed "saved" in that they were defined and saved and I run them regularly.  If I find out that the forms that I am about to archive will *still* appear in those normal forms exports, then I have a real problem... those are bad data and we'll need to get them out of those reports because we run analysis on those reports.   

--> Can you tell me if the forms that I archive will nicely disappear from my regular "export forms" exports?

--> If they won't, what can I do?  We depend on those exports to be accurate and report from...

Thanks!
Eric

[Alexandra Morgan-Kisarale]

Hi Eric,

Very sorry that this page is not clearer. Allow me to clarify: 

Archiving a form will remove the data that had been collected and reverse any changes made to the case through that form. Changes will be reflected immediately in form data, case data, reports, and exports. For Daily Saved Exports, the changes will be reflected only after the report regenerates, within 24 hours or upon a manual update.

So, in the text you quoted, we were referring to Daily Saved Exports, which is a specific type of export. For all other exports that you have saved so that you can easily run them: once you archive a form, the form will be removed immediately from these exports and any changes that the form made to the case will be reversed.

I hope this is helpful! Let us know if we can clarify this any further.

My best,

Alexandra

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[Alexandra Morgan-Kisarale]

Hi Eric,

Just a quick point of clarification on this. 

• Daily Saved Exports will include archived forms. 

• Other exports (exports that has been saved and are available in your list to export/download, but are not designated as Daily Saved Exports) will not include archived forms. That is, any form you archive will be removed from these exports.

We've updated our documentation, which we hope makes this distinction clearer. 

Thanks for the question, and let us know if you have others.

My best, 

Alexandra

[Eric Stephan]

Great -- thanks for the clear answer!

Your explanation was backed up by what I saw when I did the exports.

Appreciate it much --

Eric

[Eric Stephan]

Like I said, you answered my question just fine. But I was curious about your clarification that you made above...

If I ever do a "daily saved export" in my project... and I "archive" 10 forms from my data... are you saying that even 2 weeks later, my "daily saved export" will still be displaying those forms that I archived?   In your first email you mentioned that the daily saved report would correct itself the next time it regenerates (the next day or if manually done.)  

Just wanting to ask that clarification -- Thanks!

--Eric

[Cory Zue]

Hey Eric,

As of now archived forms will always show in "daily saved exports". We are looking into whether it makes sense to change that behavior but have no concrete timeline or plan to do so.

Cory

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