LTS 8.10

This page documents changes to the REDCap LTS branch that were implemented in LTS 8.10.2. The version numbers shown below  are the version numbers for the "standard" release where the change was originally introduced.

We do not document changes that only affect REDCap system administrators.

Version 8.10.1

BUG FIXES & OTHER CHANGES:

• Improvement: New options added to Secondary Unique Field functionality - In the "Additional Customizations" popup on the Project Setup page, users may now choose to optionally display the Secondary Unique Field's value in conjunction to displaying a record name on various project pages (in previous versions it was always displayed regardless). If left unchecked, the uniqueness of the value will still be checked during data entry or import, but the Secondary Unique Field's value will not be displayed next to the record name anywhere (e.g., in record lists, record status dashboards, reports). A second option has also been added that dictates whether or not the field label of the Secondary Unique Field will be displayed next to the value (if the value is set to be displayed next to a record name).

• Change/improvement: The "Help & FAQ" page was updated with new content.

• Change: Dashes/hyphens can now be used as the raw coded value for multiple choice fields.

Version 8.10.0

BUG FIXES & OTHER CHANGES:

• New API method: “Import Repeating Instruments and Events” – Allows users to import a list of the repeated instruments and repeating events for a project as a means of setting which instruments and events should be repeatable.

• New feature: 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 server. Note: The server on which a project is being created using a Project XML file must also be on REDCap 8.10.0 or higher in order for these components to be added, otherwise it will simply ignore these components when creating the new project.

  • Data 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

  • DDP Field Mappings (for DDP Custom and DDP on FHIR) – administrator must still enable DDP in the project manually

• 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.

Version 8.9.3

BUG FIXES & OTHER CHANGES:

• 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. Thus 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 for 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 display on survey pages.

• 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.

Version 8.9.2

BUG FIXES & OTHER CHANGES:

• 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 also “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.

• Change: Data Quality rules A and B have always ignored checkbox fields. But since a checkbox field can be set as "required", in which it produces an error message if no checkbox option is checked, then DQ rule A and B appear to be inconsistent with regard to whether a checkbox field can truly be empty/blank. To make these consistent when interpreting the missingness of checkbox fields, DQ rules A and B will no longer ignore checkboxes but will return discrepancies for a checkbox if it has no options checked. (Ticket #53120)

Version 8.9.1

BUG FIXES & OTHER CHANGES:

• Change: Users that do not have "Project Design and Setup" privileges will no longer be able to navigate to or view the Project Setup page in a given project. Since such users cannot effectively perform any actions on the Project Setup page (i.e., everything on the page is disabled), it does not make much sense for them to be able to access it at all. (Ticket #52327)

• Change/improvement: When importing data via the Data Import Tool, if a CSV data file is re-uploaded on the second page after the initial attempt (e.g., due to errors displayed after the first attempt), it now hides all the error messages on the page after clicking the Upload File button to re-upload the file. Thus it resets the page so that the user does not get confused thinking that the previous errors apply to the current upload if the re-upload process takes a while. (Ticket #52518)

• Change/improvement: When importing data via the Data Import Tool and an error is detected in the data file, the header text of the error message has been changed slightly to prevent confusion so that users more clearly understand that the file was not fully uploaded. (Ticket #52519)

• Change: On the "Add/Edit Records" page for projects in development status, the notice that real data should not be entered into a project while in development has been moved more to the top of the page to make it more prominent as a reminder to users.

Version 8.9.0

NEW FEATURES, BUG FIXES, & OTHER CHANGES:

• New feature: 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.

• New feature: “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 particular reports.

• New feature: 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 very quickly.

• Change: Changed the text "Manage Survey Participants" to "Survey Distribution Tools", which more clearly describes the pages in that section.

Version 8.8.2

BUG FIXES & OTHER CHANGES:

• Change: If a user loads a data entry form without a record in context, in which it displays the Incomplete/Complete Records drop-downs for choosing a record (this page can only be navigated to by clicking the "Show data collection instruments" link on the left-hand project menu and then selecting a form), if the project exceeds 25,000 records, it will truncate the drop-downs so that they only display the last 25,000 records ("last"=those at the end when viewing an ordered list of all records). This is to improve performance by preventing the page from having to output so much HTML to the client.

Version 8.8.1

IMPROVEMENTS, BUG FIXES & OTHER CHANGES:

• Improvement: Under the "PDF Customization Options" section in the Additional Customizations popup on the Project Setup page, a new option has been added: "Display or hide the Secondary Unique Field value (if enabled) at the top right corner of the PDF". This option will be useful, for example, when sending the PDF to a survey participant, in which the Secondary Unique Field value should not be known or viewable to the participant.

• Improvement: When selecting a color for an item under "Custom survey theme options" on the Survey Settings page, the color-picker now allows users to provide the Hex color code (e.g., #0b5394) to choose the color of the item. (Ticket #8321)

• Change: When viewing the “Add New Field”/”Edit Field” popup in the Online Designer, it will now ask the user to choose the ontology service that they wish to use (it did not do this in previous versions), even though there is just one to choose. After choosing “BioPortal Ontology Service”, it will then display all the ontologies available for BioPortal, as it has done in the past. This extra step was added to allow for more custom ontology services to be added in the future. But for now, BioPortal is the only service currently available by default in REDCap.

Version 8.8.0

IMPROVEMENTS, BUG FIXES, & OTHER CHANGES:

• New feature: PROMIS Batteries – 15 batteries of instruments are now available in the REDCap Shared Library. A battery is a set of instruments that can be downloaded from the Shared Library as a bundle, in which they are meant to all be taken together one after another within a single battery. When downloading from the Shared Library, the survey auto-continue feature will be enabled for these instruments to allow a participant to automatically continue from one to another to simulate the battery functionality.

• Improvement: A project's Record ID field can now be used as a Live Filter in any given report, thus allowing users to easily view the report for a single record.

Version 8.7.4

BUG FIXES & OTHER CHANGES:

• Major bug fix: If a user has data export privileges of "De-identified" or "Remove all tagged Identifier fields", and then the user exports a report in which every field in the report gets removed due to their export privileges, then it would mistakenly export data for *all* the fields in the entire project. (Ticket #48976)

• Major bug fix: If a user attempted to put a production project into Draft Mode on the Online Designer page, it would fail and merely reload the page. (Ticket #49866)

• Change: Added the HTML tags <map> and <area> to the list of allowed tags that can be used in user-defined text (e.g., field labels, survey instructions). (Ticket #49526)

Version 8.7.3

IMPROVEMENTS, BUG FIXES, & OTHER CHANGES:

• New options for Data Exports

  • Improvement: When exporting a report, a new “Data formatting options” section appears in the export dialog to allow users to choose the CSV delimiter character to be used in CSV Raw Data and CSV Labels exports. Options include comma (default), tab, semi-colon, pipe, and caret. This is useful in certain cases when the resulting data file needs to have another delimiter, such as a tab, for example. In addition, the two API methods “Export Records” and “Export Reports” have a new analogous parameter “csvDelimiter” that will set the CSV delimiter character if using “csv” as the format in the API request. See the API documentation for full details. (Ticket #30939)

  • Improvement: When exporting a report, a new “Data formatting options” section appears in the export dialog to allow users to optionally force all numbers into a specified decimal format. It will default to “Use fields’ native decimal format”, but provides the choices “Use period/full stop” and “Use comma” as the decimal character for all numbers. This will allow projects that have fields with period/full stop decimals (calc fields, number validated fields) and those with comma decimals (comma-as-decimal validated fields) to all be exported in the same uniform number format, thus providing greater consistency in the data being exported. In addition, the two API methods “Export Records” and “Export Reports” have a new analogous parameter “decimalCharacter” that will set specified decimal format for all numbers in the API request. See the API documentation for full details. (Ticket #30939, #34597)

• Improvement: New optional parameters added to the API Export Records method to filter data returned based on when a record was created or modified

  • dateRangeBegin – To return only records that have been created or modified *after* a given date/time, provide a timestamp in the format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (e.g., '2017-01-01 00:00:00' for January 1, 2017 at midnight server time). If not specified, it will assume no begin time.

  • dateRangeEnd – To return only records that have been created or modified *before* a given date/time, provide a timestamp in the format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (e.g., '2017-01-01 00:00:00' for January 1, 2017 at midnight server time). If not specified, it will use the current server time.

• Improvement: The Record Status Dashboard will now remember the user's last selection for the "page number" drop-down and the "records per page" drop-down, so that when they return to the dashboard in that project in the future, it will already have their last selections pre-selected for those two drop-downs. Note: It already remembers the user's last selection for "dashboard displayed" and "data access group". (Ticket #48913)

Version 8.7.2

IMPROVEMENTS, BUG FIXES, & OTHER CHANGES:

• Improvement: Performance boost – Certain pages in projects with thousands or more records should now load much faster in most cases. This includes the Record Status Dashboard, various pages utilizing Data Access Groups, and certain reports. Reports A and B should especially see significantly faster loading (excluding when viewing “all” pages in report A or B).

• Improvements related to viewing or creating reports

  • New report option that will combine checkbox options into a single column of only the checked-off options. Previously, any checkbox fields in a report would have their choices represented as separate columns in the report, but with this new setting, they can now all be represented as a single column with comma-delimited values and comma-delimited labels. Note: If data is exported to a stats package on a report using this option, checkbox fields will be represented as text fields in the stats package’s syntax file that gets generated by REDCap.

  • Report description – Users may now optionally set a description for a report, in which the description gets displayed as text below the report title on the report page. This allows users to provide instructions or explanatory text for the report. Note: HTML may be used in the description to add links or to style the text.

  • Change: When exporting a report, it now includes the report’s title as part of the resulting export files’ file name. This should make it easier to distinguish different exported data sets if a user is exporting several reports for a given project.

  • Improvement/bug fix: In previous versions it was very difficult (and sometimes impossible) to create reports with lots of fields in projects that contained >1000 total fields. In some cases, it would cause the Create Report page to be very sluggish or even to crash in some cases. This should no longer happen, and users should be able to easily create reports with thousands of fields, if they wish, with no problem.

• Improvement: If using "Local" file storage for uploaded files, inline image attachments for Descriptive fields and also survey logos will load on the page with their proper width and height already set, which should cause shifting/disturbance on the page due to the images loading slightly later than the page itself.

• Change: When exporting a data dictionary, it will now automatically prepend the Field Annotation column with a single space character if the value begins with an "@" sign. This is to prevent issues when loading the data dictionary into Microsoft Excel, which uses "@" to denote the beginning of an equation. When the data dictionary is re-uploaded back into REDCap, the extra space will be subsequently removed to maintain the integrity of the initial value in the data dictionary as it was exported.

• Change: When exporting data to SPSS, date and datetime fields are now represented as A500 and text fields as A1000 in the SPSS syntax file, whereas previously they were all represented as A30000, which could cause very slow processing when loading the data into SPSS. (Ticket #37115)

Version 8.7.1

BUG FIXES.

Version 8.7.0

NEW FEATURES, BUG FIXES, & OTHER CHANGES:

• Improvement: A "Copy existing choices" link was added to the "Add Matrix of Fields" popup on the Online Designer page (just like the same link in the "Add New Field" popup on that same page) to copy the choices from an existing multiple choices field to that matrix of fields. (Ticket #46680)

• Change: When exporting data in CSV format (raw data or labels) on the "My Reports & Exports" page, it now maintains all double quotes in free-form text, whereas previous versions would replace all double quotes with single quotes in a CSV export. Note: When exporting to stats packages, it will still replace double quotes with single quotes for compatibility purposes.

• Change/improvement: Elements on survey pages have been modified to work better for accessibility purposes, such as with screen readers.

• Change: Some language was hard-coded in previous versions. The following things have now had their text abstracted so that they is now translatable: the buttons for uploading/deleting files in the File Repository, the "Generate Schedule" button on the Schedule page, and the "Auto Logout Warning" popup. (Ticket #26708)

• Change: The footer of survey pages now says "Powered by REDCap", whereas previous versions have "REDCap X.X.X - © 20XX Vanderbilt University". For non-survey pages, the footer will remain the same.

Version 8.6.5

BUG FIXES

Version 8.6.4

BUG FIXES.

Version 8.6.3

BUG FIXES.

Version 8.6.2

BUG FIXES & OTHER CHANGES:

• Change/improvement: When displaying the filename of an uploaded file on a File Upload field on a form or survey, if the filename is very long (>34 characters in length), it now truncates the filename with an ellipsis closer to the middle of the filename rather than at the end. This allows the file extension to be visible, whereas in previous versions it was impossible to tell what type of file it is without downloading it if the filename was long.

• Change: When viewing a partially completed or fully completed survey response on a data entry form, the text color and background color of the red box near the top of the page have been changed to reflect the state of the response more accurately (i.e., it is no longer displayed as a red box, which often evokes a sense of there being an error). If the response is partially completed, it is displayed as an orange box, whereas if it is fully completed, it is displayed as a green box. The box color is thus consistent with the color instrument status icons used.

• Change: When viewing a partially completed or fully completed survey response on a data entry form, the process of displaying the number of contributors to the response in the red box near the top of the page was resulting in very slow page loads in many circumstances. To provide a better user experience for this, it now displays a "View all contributors" link instead, which can be clicked to reveal the users who have contributed to that response.

• Change: Very small wording change to the certification text on the certify page when using the e-Consent Framework on a survey.

• Change/improvement: The REDCap Shared Library can now be disabled (if desired) at the project level by an administrator on the "Edit a Project's Settings" page in the Control Center. If disabled for a given project, all Shared Library buttons and all references to the Shared Library will no longer appear in the project.

Version 8.6.1

IMPROVEMENTS, BUG FIXES, & OTHER CHANGES:

• Improvement: Smart Variables are now able to be utilized in Data Quality rule logic. Note: In many cases, Smart Variables in the logic may cause Data Quality rules to take much longer to complete, which is due to the fact that the logic has to be re-evaluated for *every* item being processed by the DQ rule, whereas normally the logic only needs to be evaluated just once at the beginning of when the DQ rule is executed.

• Improvement: Data Quality rule H (i.e., "Incorrect values for calculated fields") and auto-calcs (i.e., the process of calc fields being triggered by data imports or cross-form/cross-event calculations) can now handle Smart Variables that are used inside calculated field equations. In previous versions, such calc fields could only successfully run while on a data entry form or survey page.

• Improvement: A Data Access Group can no longer be deleted if one or more records are still assigned to it. If a user attempts to delete a DAG that contains records, it will prevent such and display an error message.

Version 8.6.0

BUG FIXES & OTHER CHANGES:

• Improvement: Improved data export for biomedical ontology fields - If fields using the biomedical ontology auto-suggest feature are being exported to a stats package, it will now render those fields as multiple choice fields (rather than as free-form text fields) in the resulting stats package syntax file, in which all the cached choices for those ontologies will be output as separate choices (values and labels) for those fields in the syntax file. Note: Since some ontologies contain thousands of choices, all possible choices will not be output in the syntax file, but instead only the cached choices that have been saved in that REDCap project for those ontologies will be output as choices in the syntax file.