Using iFormBuilder to help achieve

“Global Field Trial Compliance”

GFC Project

2016-05-11 Alan Reed, Pradeep Pudu, Bharadwaja Gajula

Summary of GFC Project

Bayer conducts regulated field trials in different countries around the globe following local regulation and high global stewardship standards.

License to operate requires comply with different and changing government regulations in each country.

In order to achieve this, the Global Field Trial Compliance (GFC) system leverages the flexibility of iFormBuilder to easily adapt the forms to the needs of each country, while standardizing the data collection process globally.

We integrated the remote data entry from the trial fields with our .NET web application and SQLServer database for managing the trial compliance using the iFormBuilder API.

Finally, we use Tableau for the GFC Dashboard to monitor progress and visualize the data.

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GFC Architecture

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GFC System• ASP.NET MVC• Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC• Aspose Words• SQL Server

Tableau

iForm app

GFC Workflow

Global

Systems:

Project,

Seed,

Location and

other

reference

data

Field Trial Researcher(FTR)

AUDITOR

GFC Dashboard

Trial ID setupNotebook

Forms

Planting

Observations

Harvest/Termination

Monitoring

Inspections

View

Report

Report

Inspection

Checklists

GFC

Permit Data

Collection

&

Trial

Compliance

Preparation

GFC Workbench: Data Review

Internal & External ReportsFinalized Data

Data FinalizationCompliance

Officer

Permit /

Notebook

Linking

Information

Tableau

ASP.NET MVCSQLServer

.NET +Aspose

Words

Country

DashboardsGlobal

Dashboard

Compliance

Officers &

Internal

Stakeholders

iForm(+ .NET)

Types of data collected in GFC in the field

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GPS coordinates of thepolygon around the field

Pictures of the field,or equipment cleaningactivity

Crop (pick from option list)Planting DateIsolation distance (from other crops)Amount of seeds plantedAmount of seeds not plantedFate of unplanted seeds

Barcodes of seed packetsand of shipment tracking #

signatures

Free-text comments(could be speech-to-text)

“We had to delay plantingby one week due to rain.”

Organization of iForm Profiles in GFC

• Built a set of “core forms” to standardize data over all countries

• E.g. Planting, Observation, Harvest forms

• For each country, a separate Profile in iFormBuilder

• Enables each country to manage their users & forms separately

• Flexibility to adapt forms to each country, while striving to utilize the same backend program logic for every country

• QA and PROD profiles for each country

• QA profile is used for conducting pilots, testing and training

• Compliance Officers in the country can add/change forms in QA only

• PROD profile is only for production data

• We use the iFormBuilder Migration Tool to migrate forms and option lists from one profile to another

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GFC Data Structure & Flow• The GFC system uses the iForm API to:

• Replicate the forms & option lists in each iForm Profile to GFC

• We use the same table structure as in the iForm JSON

• Changes to forms/option lists are replicated to the GFC regularly

• Endpoint that receives form record submission detects if new elements, pages or option list items have been added

• Form records submitted from mobile devices are posted immediately to the GFC DB via the Endpoint defined in the form

• Upon submission, we immediately create a PDF version of the data submitted for that form record in the local language of that country

• We decided to create this functionality in GFC for simpler operation

• For the Dashboard, normalized tables are created/refreshed regularly for each form/subform, and views are created for access via Tableau

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Language Localization

• Every form is in English, plus the local language in some countries

• Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese

• Originally, there was no API for fetching the localized language text from iFormBuilder to the GFC database.

• We pushed the translations via API from GFC to iFormBuilder from a spreadsheet

• However this feature to pull from iFormBuilder has been recently made available. We are testing this API, and will enable the following:

• Local countries can enter or revise their local translations into iFormBuilder, and we can fetch these into GFC

• This will be much easier for the local countries

• These language localization texts are needed to create PDF files containing the data from each form record in the original language.

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Data hierarchy for field trials

• Permit => Assigned to specific Field Trial Researchers

• Government permit authorizes Bayer to conduct the trial

• Typically between 2 and 10 permits per country per year

• Notebook => Assigned to specific Field Trial Researchers

• Conduct trials at multiple locations (farms) in the country

• For each location within the permit, we set up a notebook

• Trial => Entered by Field Trial Researchers in “Trial ID Setup Form”

• Within each notebook, we can conduct multiple trials

• We need to report information about each trial to the government

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Planting Form – showing Permit / Notebook / Trial identifiers (option lists)

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Assigning Permit & Notebooks to Field Trial Researchers

GFC uses the iForm API to create, change and delete option lists in iFormBuilder for Permit # and Notebook #

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Using the Key_Value to assign Permits to Field Trial Researchers

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Permit # Key_Value Condition_Value

iformbuilder.username==“Alan_account"

Issue discovered during preparation for global GFC training in February

• Originally, we thought we had to put all the user_id’s assigned to a Permit into one Condition_Value string

• We could only assign about 12 people to a permit, but had 27 people in the training, and in the US there will be up to 100 people per permit

• Issue: The condition value string has 500 character limit• ---[iformbuilder.username=="Agustina_FTR" || iformbuilder.username=="Cory_FTR" ||

iformbuilder.username=="Delphin_FTR" || iformbuilder.username=="Fabiana_FTR" || iformbuilder.username=="Gabriel_FTR" || iformbuilder.username=="Graciela_FTR" || iformbuilder.username=="Josefina_FTR" || iformbuilder.username=="Kaylene_FTR" || iformbuilder.username=="Kipkios_FTR" || iformbuilder.username=="Koichi_FTR" || iformbuilder.username=="Mario_FTR" || iformbuilder.username=="Maurice_FTR" || Iformbuild]---16-999-101n

• Solution: We use the Key_Value (see previous slide)

• Overall result: For the users, no change in how they work, but some delay in the project timeline for implementation and testing

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Special Endpoints for recalling forms and displaying status reports

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Key field values

Click on DONEto recall this form record.

GFC Workbench – Data ReviewReassign or Finalize Form Records

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Enter commentfor Field Trial Researcher

ReassignForm Record to the selectedUser Name(via iFormAPI in background)Display PDF

of submittedForm Record

Specific PlantingForm Record

Further comments

• User Management in GFC via API

• Create iForm user accounts

• Assign Form Groups to a specific user (“FTR” and “Audit”)

• Import via API of all images stored in iForm, so we can use these in PDF’s

• We count the API calls within GFC

• We have set up a White Label “Bayer GFC”

• Not yet deployed to users

• Acquiring Manatee Works license for barcode scanning

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Fundamental question:Assign form records?

• The architecture of iForm offers two ways of working:

• Allow any iForm mobile user to enter and submit a form record for any form (e.g. “Planting”) that has been assigned to them

• Then we provide each user with the option list values for each Permit & Notebook that they have been assigned to work on

• OR Assign specific form records to each Field Trial Researcher that already have the Permit#, Notebook#, and Trial ID pre-populated

• The Field Trial Researcher cannot change these 3 fields

• After a lot of discussion, we decided for the first approach, since the form record assignment scheme was found by the Compliance Officers to be too rigid and cumbersome

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Ideas for iFormBuilder enhancements

• List submitted, for example:

• Reassigned form records in different color in record view

• Recall & Status records

• Reduce how many times the screen has to be pulled down to refresh

• Reduce the number of dialog box pop-up’s to acknowledge

• Wrap-around for Long Strings in the record view

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GFC Dashboard (Tableau)Active Trials in US

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Overall conclusions

• The field users prefer the ease of entering data on mobile devices via iForm to going back to the office to enter data on the PC

• Zerion Software has been always very responsive when we have issues

• We have been able to resolve every significant issue that came up during the development of GFC related to using iFormBuilder

• We have learned over time where it is most efficient to place application logic, whether on the iForm side or within GFC

• Lesson: don’t make the logic between iForm & GFC too complex

• The key advantages of iFormBuilder for the GFC system are:

• Out-of-the-box functionality, reduction of implementation/maintenance cost

• Flexibility to change forms quickly to meet needs of local countries including language localization

• Real-time management of mobile data entry processes via iForm API from GFC system

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GFC Project

Thank you!

Additional Information

GFC – Technical Information

Components

• iFormBuilder

• GFC Web Application: ASP.NET MVC

• 40890 lines of code as of 2016-02-17

• Telerik UI for ASP.NET MVC

• Aspose Words – used for creating MS Word reports

• SQL Server

• 467 database tables

• Tableau

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GFC Software Architecture

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GFC Development Tools

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