One of my data entry users has reported an issue entering text data into a data element of the type “long text”. She reports that she had entered a large amount of text (around 15 lines), but after refreshing the page only the first 4 lines of text had been saved. I reviewed the audit trail and indeed only the first 4 lines were registered. This is a recurring problem, as she has many issues with data entry and data not being saved correctly. Has anyone seen a similar issue before and have any idea what could be causing it?
Are you able to reproduce this on our play servers? I tried to enter a lot of text in a data element in a data set on our dev (2.36) server and it seemed to work fine. Maybe this issue does not exist in our supported versions (2.33-2.36).
Hi @Karoline, thanks for reaching out. I think it’s more of an implementation issue. I know that DHIS2 does support large blocks of text, but for some reason this user had an issue with data entry. I shared to see if anybody else in the community had experienced a similar issue and could advise.
For example: a lot of our data entry users had (and still continue to have issues) where they report the data they entered is not saved in the system. After a lot of investigating we realized that the problem was that they were being timed out of the system - if you leave DHIS2 open too long, you get signed out, but there’s no warning message. So they would come back and continue with data entry - but that data would not be saved to the server. Now it’s true that it is usually saved in the cache and you can upload it the next time you log in, but our users were not noticing the messages prompting them to upload, so in the end, they lost their data. This has happened many, many times.
I share this as an example of how an implementation issue can cause what appears to be a technical error in the system. I think sometimes there is a bit of a disconnect between the issues we see as implementers and the technical teams. In any case, I appreciate the channels provided by this community to raise issues and find solutions
Hi @Karoline and @Guerra-Arias_Maria - I am facing a similar issue. Staff entering text data report that they as they are entering longer text data, it often gets deleted as they are entering it and they have to re-enter the same block of text multiple times. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks! Courtney
Hi Courtney, thanks for sharing your experience. Unfortunately I have never got to the bottom of this issue - hoping more people will see this thread and help us out. Which version of DHIS2 are you on?
