On the evening of Thursday, March 7, the CTS-IT will upgrade REDCap from version 8.8.2 to 8.11.12. You can expect a downtime for REDCap from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. while we complete the upgrade.
The new version of REDCap scheduled for release on March 7, 2019, has some new features and several improvements to existing features, including reports, data privacy settings, enhanced XML exports and external module integration.
Full list of features:
- New features:
- Report Folders – Reports can now be organized into folders in any given project. If a user has “Add/Edit Reports” privileges, they will see an “Organize” link on the left-hand project menu above the project’s reports. They will be able to create folders and then assign their reports to a folder, after which the project’s reports will be displayed in collapsible groups on the left-hand menu.
- “Edit Access” for reports – In addition to setting “View Access” when creating or editing a report, users can now set the report’s “Edit Access” (under Step 1) to control who in the project can edit, copy or delete the report. This setting will be very useful if one wishes to prevent certain users from modifying or deleting reports.
- Report search – A new search feature exists on the left-hand menu to allow users to search within the title of that project’s reports to help them navigate to a report quickly.
- New features relating to Data Privacy (e.g., GDPR) – The new settings listed below are available on the “Edit a Project’s Settings” page for a given project. These must be enabled by a REDCap administrator on a per-project basis.
- (optional) Delete a record’s logging activity when deleting the record – If enabled, this will delete all the data values and actions logged for the given record being deleted as seen on the Project Logging page. Note: For multi-arm longitudinal projects, this feature will delete the record’s logging for the given record only in the current arm. This feature can be used to aid in compliance with GDPR or similar regulations that require “right to erasure.”
- (optional) Auto-delete all Data Export Files in the File Repository that were created more than X days ago – To enable this setting, an administrator may set a value from 1 to 999 to set the number of days after which all Data Export files will get automatically deleted from the project’s File Repository. This feature can be used to aid in compliance with GDPR or similar regulations that require “right to erasure.” Note: This will only delete files under the Data Export Files tab. No other types of files in the File Repository will be deleted.
- (optional) Custom footer text for survey pages – Custom text may be provided (including HTML-formatted text) that will be displayed either via a modal dialog or inline at the bottom of all survey pages in the project. This could potentially be used to display a data privacy statement or other similar things that should be displayed on the same page where data is collected. Note: This is only displayed on survey pages.
- Many project components added to the Project XML file– When downloading the Project XML of metadata or metadata+data on the Project Setup–> Other Functionality page, it now provides checkboxes to allow users to incorporate the project components listed below in the XML file. This means that all these things will be easily transferable now when exporting/importing the Project XML to create a new project on the same REDCap server or on a different REDCap serverData Access Groups (including DAG assignments for records if data is included in the XML file)
- Data Quality Rules
- User Roles
- Surveys and survey settings (including a survey logo, if used)
- Automated Survey Invitations
- Survey Queue
- Reports
- Report Folders
- Record Status Dashboards
- The “REDCaptcha” external module was integrated into REDCap
- This feature allows users to utilize the Google reCAPTCHA functionality to help protect public surveys from abuse by “bots,” which are automated software programs that might enter trash data into surveys. Users will be able to choose to enable the Google reCAPTCHA functionality on the Public Survey page in their project, after which the public survey will display the reCAPTCHA checkbox and “I’m not a robot” text on a survey page prior to allowing the participant to view the public survey. This feature is not employed on any private survey links because those are unique to a record and thus would never be made publicly available like a public survey link would.
- Note: A survey participant will never have to pass the reCAPTCHA test more than once per day on a given device/computer.
- The “Sticky Matrix Header” external module was integrated into REDCap.This feature will cause matrix headers to float and stick to the top of a page on either a survey or data entry form so that the matrix headers are always visible, which is helpful for matrices with many rows.
- The “Codebook Concertina” external module was integrated into REDCap. This feature will display Expand and Collapse buttons for each instrument listed on the Codebook page in a project.
Full list of changes:
- Change: Changed the text from “Manage Survey Participants” to “Survey Distribution Tools,” which more clearly describes the pages in that section.
- Change: Survey responses that were completed using the e-Consent Framework will no longer be editable (this includes no editing on data entry forms, surveys, Data Import Tool, API, and Mobile App). In previous versions, completed e-consent surveys were editable.
- Change: When granting a user access to a project via the User Rights page, in which the “notify user via email” checkbox is checked, it now includes a link directly to the project in the resulting email to the user, whereas previous versions only included a link to the main REDCap home page.
- Change/improvement: When composing a survey invitation on the Participants List page or via Survey Options on a data entry form, the “From”/sender drop-down list now displays all the email addresses (primary, secondary and tertiary) of all users in the project, which is how the setup dialog for Automated Survey Invitations has always behaved. In previous versions, these two places would only allow the user to choose from the current user’s email addresses as the “From”/sender address. This provides more flexibility and establishes greater consistency between all the interfaces for scheduling survey invitations.
- Change/improvement: When using the e-Consent Framework, a new option was added to the Survey Settings page: “Allow e-Consent responses to be edited by users?” If left unchecked (default), then users will not be able to edit a completed e-Consent response (although it can be locked or e-signed by a user with locking/e-signature privileges). If the setting is checked, then users will be able to modify the survey response so long as they have “Edit survey responses” privileges for that survey instrument. Note: If the e-Consent survey response is modified after being completed, this will not affect the e-Consent PDF file that was stored in the File Repository.
- Change/improvement: In the pop-up dialog for moving a project to production, it now displays the number of records in the project to help the user decide if they wish to keep all data or have all records deleted when moving to production.
- Improvement: A new search utility was added to the top of the “Help & FAQ” page to make finding keywords easier on the page. It allows for multiple word matches and “exact phrase” matching. When performing the search, all matching questions/answers will be displayed on the page with the keywords being highlighted while non-matching questions/answers will be hidden on the page.
- Improvement: A new “Filter by event” option was added to the Logging page: “Record deleted (only).” This allows users to display only the logged events in which a record was deleted in the project.
- Improvement: When enabling an instrument as a survey or editing an existing survey’s survey settings, it now displays a “Save Changes” button at the top of the page (next to the Cancel button) so that the user does not necessarily have to scroll all the way to the bottom to submit the page.