KoboToolbox 2022 year in review and exciting new features

In the past year, our community of users has continued to grow, with even more organizations and individuals using KoboToolbox to collect and analyze data. We now have users in 240 countries and territories across the globe, and our platform has been used to collect data on a wide range of issues, from public health and environmental conservation to human rights.

With use of KoboToolbox at an all-time high in 2022, let’s take a look at the numbers:

• 206 million survey submissions received—over 17 million per month on Kobo-maintained servers and thousands more on private servers
• Over 515,000 new survey projects created
• More than 340,000 new user accounts added

We also released a host of new features over the past year in response to feedback from users and organizations in the field. Here’s what we were busy adding to KoboToolbox:

• Improved submission editing, including media files, and synchronous exports for API and dashboards
• Two-factor authentication and a new photo gallery with filters for large projects
• Upgraded functionality for adding groups of questions to the library
• Natural language processing tools for collecting and reviewing audio responses, transcription, and translation
• Improved data security and load times with significant upgrades to our software and server infrastructure

Here’s a few highlights from some of the other projects we were working on in 2022:

• Launched the TRACE portal with UNESCO and Education Above All to collect real-time data about attacks on education and support data sharing
• Delivered training sessions remotely and in person to people in over 50 countries
• Published our new website with improved navigation and updated information
• Worked with translators around the world to add more languages to our user interface
• Received the Gold Anthem Award for Best Humanitarian Action and Services Product

User Spotlight

To date, more than 14,000 organizations have used KoboToolbox to make a difference. We’d like to highlight some of the incredible work that has been done in the past year by KoboToolbox users like you.

• In Moldova, UNHCR’s EU+ Air Transfers initiative has been using KoboCollect to gather essential data to support Ukrainians fleeing the war. Based on the data collected with KoboToolbox, the initiative has relocated 1,997 people via 116 flights.
• In the Philippines, the Department of Agrarian Reform collected data on 216,193 hectares of land, generated 1,502 land titles, and distributed titles to 1,379 rural farmers.
• In Mozambique, the Climate Smart Agriculture and Water (Sofala) project collected 6,000 surveys from local farmers on agricultural practices.
• In Ukraine, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is using KoboToolbox to assess the needs of people affected by the war.

Türkiye-Syria Emergency Support: Drag-and-Drop Survey Creation Dozens of local and international organizations have been using KoboToolbox to respond to the devastating earthquake in Türkiye (Turkey) and Syria in February. To support data collection, our team developed sets of drag-and-drop survey questions specifically for this crisis. These question blocks can be used to collect location data in any type of survey. Learn more about these resources.

What’s Next From KoboToolbox

Here’s a look at some of our newest tools and exciting features that are coming soon.

Natural language processing tools: We’ve been developing new natural language processing tools that will make it easier and faster to capture complex qualitative data, without sacrificing sample size. These tools use speech recognition and machine translation to collect rich qualitative data from a greater number of people, with greater efficiency.

KoboToolbox Essentials Course: We’re also getting ready to launch the KoboToolbox Essentials Course! This hands-on self-paced course helps users to develop foundational data collection and analysis skills. Upon completion, participants will receive an official KoboToolbox Essentials certificate.

SSO support & regional project views for private servers: We’ve added single sign-on (SSO) for private servers to strengthen security and make it easier for team members to manage login credentials. We also added region and country level project views for better data management across distributed teams.

Our Latest Resources

We continue to grow and update our resources to better support our users and improve KoboToolbox. Here are a few of the most recently updated articles on our support website:

• Editing responses in multiple submissions
• Connecting to your data using synchronous exports
• KoboToolbox data security measures: Keeping your data safe
• Using Public Collections

Looking Ahead

We believe free and open source data collection can change the lives of millions for better. As we look ahead to 2023 and beyond, we’re excited to continue building on the progress we’ve made so far. We’re committed to improving our platform for all our users and developing innovative data collection tools for organizations around the world.

To all of our users, thank you for being part of the KoboToolbox community!

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