QR code / PDF reports for LOIs

@aurelgrooves

FR first created for Ground platform: google/ground-platform#2242

@aurelgrooves is currently demoing in Cameroon and stakeholders there strongly suggest the need of something shareable at the end of each LOI collection that leads to an overview of data collected and can connect to e.g. Whisp Earthmap.
That overview should be easily shareable with surveyed individuals, e.g. by QR code and by that typical share function on all Android phones where you can copy the link, send through Whatsapp, send by eMail, etc...
Eventually, that should include GeoIDs.

@gino-m

@gino-m thoughts?

@jo-spek

@jo-spek What do you mean by "at the end of each LOI collection"? Any why would the report need to be per LOIs? Also, there currently isn't a well defined "end" to a survey or job. Would this require us to introduce one, or do you mean that they generate the report at any time?

@aurelgrooves

@jo-spek What do you mean by "at the end of each LOI collection"?

@aurelgrooves reported that surveyed individuals really like to have something concrete after being surveyed. The closest to that would be sharing a QR code once an LOI is created. Maybe something like this:

That would then link to some kind of page with a printable PDF holding a bunch of information. E.g., all the answers given to the surveyor, maybe a GeoID and a Whisp output. TBD.

I've heard a similar request today from Sierra Leone, and Kenyan stakeholders also continuously asked for a feature like that.

A QR code would be helpful if you only have a physical printout and want to get it on the device. Since we're already on the device, we can probably do better. But if I'm understanding correctly, they essentially want a scoreboard of how much data they've surveyed so far, which they can share with others? A few questions to answer first:

What information should be presented there?
Should it be "live", always showing their latest progress, or a static snapshot at time of sharing?
Where would they share this info to? Whatsapp, social media, email, or something else?

@aurelgrooves

But if I'm understanding correctly, they essentially want a scoreboard of how much data they've surveyed so far, which they can share with others?

No, the idea is fundamentally to have an individual report for the LOI that they have just collected to share with the surveyed person right when the survey is finished. Something tangeable for the surveyed person that they can keep. E.g., they scan the code and are redirected to a link from which they can download their personal plot's report. That same link should also be in the output for each LOI in Ground platform later.

Information to be presented there is something we would have to discuss. Something similar has already been presented in other solutions in Cameroon before @aurelgrooves.
Could be either, also an issue to discuss.
Sharing primarily through WhatsApp, which is what most people use. Maybe also by mail or through another messenger. Not for social media.

The whole thing is a tentative idea, which until now only saw my inputs. This is worth discussing with other stakeholders.

I created a quick draft for a possible report format (just an idea, nothing official). The QR code above works with it. Here the link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KFuGGCYize5BXuveOrHLVwbPBH2lAZjWh3nheQTtnoI/edit?tab=t.0

Interesting.. How would we create that from data entered into Ground? Many of the concepts listed there simply don't exist in the current software. Is this something we can do with the tool as it is today, or would it require adding semantics to the tasks/fields/questions in order to be able to create this type of report?

@andreia-ferreira

@andreia-ferreira @rfontanarosa @kenstershiro @gino-m @lecrabe

Just had a discussion on this with Rémi, because such a feature has been repeatedly requested by users in multiple countries.

Most straightforward low-hanging fruit: Generate a URL and embed a sharing button (and maybe a QR code) at the end of creating a survey entry as well as next to already collected entries, something like this:

The URL lands you on the ground.openforis.org page for the location of interest in Viewer mode.

This requires:

Creation of the link to the LOI on ground.openforis.org (ideally link creation even working offline)
Implementation of a sharing button at the end of an entry and in the map overview next to sites already collected.
Opening Viewer rights to anybody without restrictions beside needing the link to the LOI.
Creating a mobile view page for LOIs on Ground Web platform

Please add if I missed anything.

Addendum: We are also thinking about an offline sharing mechanism for the geometry only, where a QR code holds the entire geometry in JSON notation. This can quite easily be done for geometries up to 100 nodes (polygon corners).
Those could then be easily read into other applications, such as, e.g., WHIMO.
Also the generation of a printable PDF for each Ground LOI was discussed.
But let's first go with the above mentioned low-hanging fruits.

@jo-spek

@jo-spek there's quite a lot to unpack here, and lots of questions to answer. Can I suggest we discuss this in more detail at the next standup? Some things to think about:

who is this information for? Enumerators or farm owners?
what are they going to use it for?
what is the unit/subject of information? An LOI like a farm, or a survey?
what information exactly do you want to share?
is all of the information already available in Ground?
is it all publicly available?

@kenstershiro

@jo-spek there's quite a lot to unpack here, and lots of questions to answer. Can I suggest we discuss this in more detail at the next standup? Some things to think about:

Hi @kenstershiro

This is for farm / plot owners. It has been communicated to us time and again in multiple different geometries, that farmers need something tangible after having been surveyed for acceptance of surveys being conducted. Enumerators coming, asking questions and just leaving again is something that is not well-appreciated by many farmers. Sharing a link with them to a page holding all the information could help greatly to increase acceptance and understanding for surveys.
Besides having control over their data, they may also use it to share it later with, e.g., buyers of commodities. If we can implement the suggested offline sharing of a geometry entirely stored as payload of a QR code, that could go a long way in terms of data ownership and interoperability. (GeoIDs follow the same principle but are more lightweight. Development is ongoing.)
An LOI like a farm. One farmer gets surveyed. At the end of being surveyed, they get the link and can always access the information that have been collected. Of their farm only; they can not access all LOIs of the entire survey.
All of the information is already available in Ground, it is just a question of how to best make it accessible to individual farmers, surveyed individuals respectively.
That's a big question we asked ourselves: When you can just openly access the information through a simple link, isn't it easily accessible to anybody? The initial argument was that the links are sufficiently obscure / not logically reproducible, that a crawler could just access all the information. This is beyond my technical understanding and might warrant a proper evaluation regarding data security or a different solution in terms of how to access the data.

@jo-spek

Thanks for the additional explanation @jo-spek . A couple of follow ups:

I don't think that an offline generation of a URL/QR code etc could work, because the URL needs a reference to the specific LOI, and that id is generated on the server. So there would need to be a successful synch with the server before any URL could be generated. Given the aim is to share with the farmer via WhatsApp it's related to the same issue, this would all require internet access
Formatting the output like your example assumes that we know the data structure. But Ground by nature allows completely flexible survey questions, so there's no guarantee that there would be a name, surname, address, etc, and even if they are there there's no guarantee of the field names, i.e. we would need to build semantics. This is a big task and could make things a lot more rigid, so should be discussed in detail. A compromise could be to just print out whatever we have from the survey, a table of field names and values, but it should be clear this could contain anything,
Data privacy is the other big one - settings would probably be needed to decide which survey LOIs can be shared, which fields of the survey, etc. Once the link is shared you either assume the content is fully public or you require users to authenticate when they access the link, which I don't think you want.
As you can see there are some big issues to talk through, I think a call would be better.

@kenstershiro

Thanks for the additional explanation @jo-spek . A couple of follow ups:

Hi @kenstershiro, to address those follow ups:

@rfontanarosa said this would actually be possible, but I don't know the specifics. Maybe you can clarify @rfontanarosa ? For the moment however, implementing this functionality for online devices would go a long way. That one is the low-hanging fruit. Going for offline probably requires more effort indeed.
Don't pay too much attention to that suggested output document I linked as GoogleDoc up there. That is a midterm goal. Short-term is indeed this:
A compromise could be to just print out whatever we have from the survey, a table of field names and values, but it should be clear this could contain anything,
Maybe there is a simple way to give both the link and a short password? Only those who have the password can access the public link? Probably requires more developer time. I can't estimate that, so a call would indeed be good.

@jo-spek

Additional notes:

Add the share capability to the Survey completed page
Add the share capability to the view LOI on map popup (points and polygons)
For MVP requires online connectivity to generate geoid and share URL/QR code
To discuss: in offline case thinking of generating an id - what about geoids
Content would be (potentially) a shape on a map and (definitely) a table of the survey questions and answers
@jo-spek to discuss with @vittorino next week. @gino-m please shout if you have any further inputs/concerns

This is actually multiple issues (to be split):

[P0] Share geometry across devices and apps => QR code containing geometry as GeoJSON
[P1] Give farmers an artifact they can save and share -> PDF they can download or share with other apps
[P2] Share geometry with apps on same device

This would be on confirmation screen and on the feature card.

UX challenges:

How to differentiate btw sharing only geometry (GeoJSON) and full submission (PDF) across devices (QR code) or w/apps on shame device (Share).

Design proposal from Victor: google/ground-platform#2242 (comment)

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QR code / PDF reports for LOIs #3373

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QR code / PDF reports for LOIs #3373

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kenstershiro commented on Nov 28, 2025

gino-m commented on Nov 28, 2025

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