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Field Operations, Users, and Assignments

Introduction

Coordinating large-scale field operations involves creating field staff accounts, provisioning regional workspaces, distributing sample assignments to enumerators, and managing spatial maps.

SurveySolutionsAPIv2 automates these operational workflows, enabling seamless integration with sample registries and field monitoring dashboards.

1. Workspace Administration

Administrators can partition projects into isolated workspaces (e.g. by region, pilot vs. main survey, or distinct administrative units).

Note on Permissions: Workspace administration operations (suso_createWorkspace, suso_updateWorkspace, suso_deleteWorkspace, suso_enableWorkspace, and suso_assignWorkspace) require server-level Administrator (admin) credentials. Regular API user accounts are restricted to their assigned workspace and cannot create, modify, or delete workspaces.

Creating a New Workspace

# Create a dedicated workspace for a regional survey (requires admin credentials)
suso_createWorkspace(
  new_workspace = "central_region",
  displayName = "Central Region Survey 2025"
)

Updating Workspace Details

# Update display name
suso_updateWorkspace(
  workspace = "central_region",
  displayName = "Central Region (Updated Jan 2025)"
)

Enabling and Disabling Workspaces

When fieldwork for a region concludes, disable the workspace to prevent unintended edits while keeping historical data intact:

# Temporarily disable access
suso_enableWorkspace(workspace = "central_region", enable = FALSE)

# Re-enable access
suso_enableWorkspace(workspace = "central_region", enable = TRUE)

2. Managing Users and Field Staff

Field hierarchies typically consist of Headquarters, Supervisors, and Interviewers.

Batch Creating Enumerators

Rather than creating dozens of enumerator accounts manually via the web interface, suso_createUSER() provisions staff in bulk from a standard data frame:

# Define field staff to create
new_staff <- data.frame(
  Role       = c("Supervisor", "Interviewer", "Interviewer"),
  UserName   = c("supervisor01", "interviewer01", "interviewer02"),
  Password   = c("SecurePass1!", "SecurePass1!", "SecurePass1!"),
  Supervisor = c(NA, "supervisor01", "supervisor01"),
  FullName   = c("Sarah Supervisor", "John Interviewer", "Amina Interviewer"),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)

# Create staff accounts on the server
result <- suso_createUSER(userlist = new_staff)

Querying Field Staff with UserClass

To inspect active field staff, retrieve supervisors or interviewers:

# List all supervisors
supervisors <- suso_getSV()

# List all interviewers and supervisors
all_users <- suso_getUSR()

The returned object inherits from UserClass (and data.table), enabling direct table operations and custom summaries:

# Display active staff
demo_users[, .(UserName, Role, FullName, Supervisor)]
#>         UserName        Role           FullName   Supervisor
#>           <char>      <char>             <char>       <char>
#> 1:  supervisor01  Supervisor   Sarah Supervisor         <NA>
#> 2: interviewer01 Interviewer   John Interviewer supervisor01
#> 3: interviewer02 Interviewer  Amina Interviewer supervisor01
#> 4: interviewer03 Interviewer    Ali Interviewer supervisor01
#> 5: interviewer04 Interviewer Fatima Interviewer supervisor01

Check class membership:

is.UserClass(demo_users)
#> [1] TRUE

3. Creating and Managing Assignments

Assignments represent fieldwork tasks allocated to specific interviewers or supervisors.

Creating Preloaded Assignments

Assignments can be created with pre-filled sample identifiers (e.g. household ID, cluster, address, or target respondent name) using suso_createASS():

# Create assignments for a questionnaire
suso_createASS(
  questID = "17a9fa22-1ef6-46d2-8c30-426aa876f273",
  version = 1,
  df = list(
    ResponsibleName = "interviewer01",
    Quantity = 10
  )
)

Querying Existing Assignments with assignmentClass

suso_get_assignments() retrieves all assignments in the active workspace:

# Retrieve all assignments
assignments <- suso_get_assignments()

The returned object is an assignmentClass instance:

# View sample assignments
demo_ass[, .(Id, ResponsibleName, Quantity, InterviewsCount, Archived)]
#>       Id ResponsibleName Quantity InterviewsCount Archived
#>    <int>          <char>    <int>           <int>   <lgcl>
#> 1:   101   interviewer01       10               8    FALSE
#> 2:   102   interviewer01       15              15    FALSE
#> 3:   103   interviewer02       10               7    FALSE
#> 4:   104   interviewer03       12              12    FALSE
#> 5:   105   interviewer04        8               4    FALSE

Check class membership:

is.assignmentClass(demo_ass)
#> [1] TRUE

Reassigning Work and Modifying Assignments

If an enumerator falls ill or fieldwork territories are adjusted, reassign assignments to another team member or modify target quotas using suso_set_assignments():

# Reassign assignment #101 to interviewer02 by username
suso_set_assignments(
  AssId = 101,
  payload = "interviewer02",
  operations.type = "assign"
)

# Alternatively, pass a data frame or data table with Responsible (or user UUID)
suso_set_assignments(
  AssId = 101,
  payload = data.frame(Responsible = "8a816c29-a017-49d0-8258-8c27fc3a13f7"),
  operations.type = "assign"
)

# Modify assignment interview quota (e.g. increase to 20, or -1 for unlimited)
suso_set_assignments(
  AssId = 101,
  payload = 20,
  operations.type = "changeQuantity"
)

4. Map Management for Spatial Surveys

For spatial surveys, Survey Solutions supports offline basemaps (e.g. GeoTIFF, MBTiles, Shapefiles) downloaded to tablets.

Uploading and Assigning Maps

# Either upload the content of a folder (automatically zipped)
suso_mapupload(
  workspace   = "myworkspace",
  path_to_zip = "./mapfiles/"
)

# Or a zip file with the files included
suso_mapupload(
  workspace   = "myworkspace",
  path_to_zip = "../mapfiles/maps.zip"
)

# Assign map to an interviewer
suso_mapassign(
  fileName   = "cluster_101_boundary.tif",
  userName   = "interviewer01",
  assignUser = TRUE
)

Generating Spatial Reports

# Generate a map report of completed interviews
suso_mapreport(
  questID = "17a9fa22-1ef6-46d2-8c30-426aa876f273",
  version = 1,
  variable = "gps_dwelling"
)

These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.