Edit Form Submissions

Owned by Ben Talbot
Last updated: Mar 28, 2024 by Krinda Wernicke
3 min read

  1. This functionality will be deprecated in May 2019. For the current functionality, please refer to Data Cleaning: Clean Form Submission

  2. Edit form submissions has many caveats. Be sure to read and understand the limitations before utilizing this feature. Considering the constraints on editing form submissions, we recommend against relying on this feature as an integral part of your organization's workflow.

The Edit Form Submission feature allows you to modify a form that has already been submitted by using CommCareHQ.

Overview

This feature will add a button to every Form Details page (accessible by going to the Submit History report and clicking "View Form").

Press the “edit submission” button and the form will open in Web Apps, with the original responses pre-populated:

Make any changes you want, and then click on submit. When viewing the form again you will see a notification across the top that the form was edited:

Just click on the link in the notification bar in order to view the original version.

Important Notes

  • The Web Apps form that opens when clicking on "Edit Submission" will use the version of the form that was used on the original submission.

  • You will be editing the submission as the user who submitted it, regardless of who you are logged in as. You can perform this as a web user.

  • Case management is supported. Any updates to the case that are made will be applied in the order the submission was originally received in. This means that if you change question that updates a case property, and that property was changed by a form that was submitted after the one you are editing, that change won't be reflected in the final case state.

  • You cannot change the case that the form references.

  • Basic case property loading into hidden values will reflect the state of the case at the time the form was submitted

  • The submission date/time of the form will not change.

Limitations

  • Any external references will reflect the current user data, not the data at the time the form was filled in. This includes lookup tables, user groups, and product/location data (fixtures).

  • All existing Web Apps limitations apply.

  • Forms that reference a User Case property should not be modified using this feature. 

  • Any advanced case operations (from hard-coded XML or casedb references) do not have defined behavior. They are likely to reflect the latest state of the case and not the state when the form was filled in.

  • Behavior with CommTrack / ledger references is undefined.

  • You may need to perform a user data reset to see the latest updates on another device.

  • Editing forms that use repeat groups to create cases will create new cases instead of updating old ones

  • Forms submitted via Web Apps or App Preview cannot be modified using this feature.