✨Avicenna October Update: Stability and Improvements

Hello Avicenna Community,

This past month, our team focused on enhancing the overall stability of our platform. We've resolved many bugs and also implemented four useful or necessary improvements. These updates are part of our continuous effort to provide you with a smoother and more reliable experience.

In case you're wondering what we have in our roadmap, check the "What's Next?" section at the end.

Here's what we've achieved in October:

🌟 Improvements

Enhanced security tests in development pipelines
We enhanced our development pipelines to implement structured security tests aligned with ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR standards. While we had some security checks in place, this update strengthens and standardizes them to meet current compliance requirements, ensuring robust security before deploying new versions of our software/apps to the production environment.
Hiding the Previous button in surveys
We’ve introduced an option that allows researchers to show or hide the Previous button in surveys. The Previous button lets participants return to previous questions to change their responses. Read more about this on our Learn website.
Reference to survey questions in notification templates
We enhanced the Notification Templates by adding “Reference to Survey Question” to the placeholders list. This update allows researchers to easily add this placeholder through the UI, improving usability and eliminating the need to manually type it in.
Targeting Android 14
We’ve updated our participant Android app to target Android 14 (API level 34) to comply with the latest Google Play requirements. This ensures our app benefits from the latest security and performance enhancements in the Android ecosystem. Rest assured that the Android versions our app supports haven’t changed. On the other hand, as part of this update, we needed to add a new study-setup alert on the participant Android apps for granting full-screen permission, which is essential for displaying Televisit call alerts on a locked device.

🐞 Bug Fixes

Unnecessary records in survey response history
We resolved an issue in the participant web app where the responses sent to the server for in-progress surveys included all questions, marking upcoming questions as “unanswered”. This caused unnecessary records in the history of those questions. On the other hand, we ensured our server prevents identical consecutive responses in the history, no matter where they come from.
Character limit for data source name
We fixed an issue where users could enter names longer than 100 characters when adding a new data source, resulting in an error message saying “Something went wrong”.
Uniform distribution of Stroop neutral round texts
We’ve added an error message for cases where researchers enforce uniform distribution for Stroop neutral round texts in round-based games, but the texts can’t be evenly distributed for any reason. Previously, you could publish the Stroop with such incorrect configurations.
Unnecessary loading at the end of Stroop games
We addressed an issue where the last page of the Stroop games displayed a loading bar for an extended period after submitting the responses and before the Finish button appeared.
Missing survey drafts in duplicated studies
We fixed an issue in study duplication where only the last published version of a survey was duplicated. Now, if a survey has only a draft version, that version is also duplicated, preventing errors when opening the survey in duplicated studies.
Sessions calendar not updating after some actions
We resolved an issue where sessions created by the researcher on the Activity Sessions page did not appear on the calendar until a reload was performed. Additionally, we fixed a similar issue for batch-deleting sessions.
Audio responses not appearing in Activity Responses
We addressed an issue where audio answers to Audio/Text questions submitted via the participant web app were not appearing on the Activity Responses page of the researcher dashboard.
Opening dropout survey
We fixed an issue where participants attempting to drop out of a study on the web app could not access the dropout survey, as it remained stuck on the loading screen.
Linking issue under WYSIWYG editors
We fixed a problem with the Link button under our WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors in the researcher dashboard. Previously, users had to click elsewhere after pressing the button to see the dialog, and inserting a link wouldn’t make any changes.
Unsaved responses on survey expiration
We resolved an issue on both participant Android and iOS apps where responses were not saved if a survey expired while participants were still answering questions. The survey would automatically close without saving any responses.
Timezone margin issue in Activity Sessions
We resolved a timezone issue affecting the display of sessions in the “Day” mode on the Activity Sessions page, where sessions scheduled between 00:00 and 01:00 were not visible.
In-progress data for expired sessions
We fixed an issue in the participant Android and iOS apps where in-progress data was not cleared after the session expired. This caused new sessions for the same activity to incorrectly use the old in-progress data as the start.
Downloading pending invitations
We addressed an issue occurring on some specific study sites where downloading the pending invitations CSV raised an error related to the test participant feature we introduced recently.
Incorrect prompt times for sessions
We resolved an issue where sessions submitted via the participant web app had incorrect prompt times, including dates from the 1970s. The update ensures that the prompt time matches the scheduled time accurately.
Preventing multiple form submissions on the sign-up page
We addressed an issue where the sign-up page on the web app allowed users to click the Sign Up button multiple times, sending multiple requests. This update implements a loading state for that button, preventing additional clicks and multiple form submissions.
Incorrect loop placeholder values
We fixed an issue with looped survey sections in the participant web app where placeholder values did not match the expected format. After answering a number question marked as the loop source, subsequent sections incorrectly displayed the placeholder referring to that question as 0, 1, 2, etc., rather than 1st, 2nd, and so on. We also ensured that all supported languages have translations for these ordinal numbers.
Incorrect value for placeholders referring to Multiple Answer questions
We resolved an issue in the participant web app where placeholders referring to Multiple Answer questions were not correctly replaced with the list of selected answers. Instead of displaying the answer contents in the order they were selected, placeholders remained unchanged.
General error messaging for session CSV upload
We fixed an issue with session CSV uploads where an unclear error message was shown if the scheduled time of a row was not within the corresponding participant’s participation start and end times. This fix ensures that the specific error details are now shown.
Dropout survey access
We resolved an issue on the participant Android app where participants were unable to open the dropout survey and faced an error.
Crash with Audio and Audio/Text questions
We fixed a critical issue where the participant iOS app would crash when participants responded to Audio and Audio/Text questions in surveys, decided to continue the session later, and re-opened the survey.
Crash with choice-based questions
Related to the previous bug fix, we resolved an issue where the participant iOS app would crash when saving the in-progress responses to surveys with single answer and multiple answer questions, re-opening the survey, and navigating to the next or previous question from those choice-based questions.
Timezone handling in activity responses
We addressed several issues with timezone handling on the Activity Responses page and during its exports. The fixes ensure that participant dates/times are correctly reflected in responses despite timezone changes.
Video box for the current user in Televisit calls
We fixed the Televisit calls to ensure the user’s video stream in the bottom right now displays the entire frame, rather than just covering the video box.
Reason behind unanswered questions in looped sections
We resolved an issue on both iOS and Android apps where the reason a survey question in looped sections was left unanswered was not correctly recorded.
Crash with Barcode questions
We fixed a survey bug causing the participant iOS app to crash when navigating back to a previously answered Barcode question.
Restricting login and password reset for invited participants
We fixed a bug where participants, who were invited to a study but did not complete the sign-up process, could log in or reset their password. This issue caused them to be logged out automatically every few hours.
Public survey not found
We fixed an issue where public surveys failed to load, displaying a message that the survey did not exist.
Empty placeholders in public surveys
We addressed a bug in public surveys where placeholders referring to questions did not display values despite being answered earlier.
Password validation on web server
We resolved an issue in our web server validation that previously only checked for the presence of a letter in passwords. Now, passwords must contain at least one digit too besides previous constraints. This enhancement aligns web server validation with the security checks already enforced by the apps, ensuring stronger password requirements.
Sending notifications for “Session Released”
We fixed an issue where notifications related to “Session Released” notification templates were not sent via email and SMS.
Evaluation of _since_reg_ tokens in criteria
We addressed an issue in our web server where _since_reg_ tokens (e.g., _days_since_reg_date) in activity criteria or their triggering-logic criteria were not evaluated correctly. Previously, these tokens were incorrectly calculated based on the session’s generation time instead of the session’s scheduled time.
Survey translations in participant web app
We fixed a bug in the participant web app where survey content defaulted to the Base language instead of the participant’s selected language, like Chinese.
Timeout for some activities
We addressed a performance issue where activities other than survey, time-use, and page, took significantly longer to load on participant Android and iOS apps.
Formatting in survey responses’ question contents
We resolved a bug where formatting, such as bold text, in survey question content was removed from the metadata when displayed in the researcher dashboard or exported files. This was due to a sanitization process stripping HTML tags. The data was stored correctly on our web server.
Autocorrect disabled in survey text fields
We fixed a bug where the autocorrect feature was disabled in text fields within surveys on participant Android and iOS apps.
Phone number & email address verification for participants
We resolved an issue in the incomplete study-setup alerts on the participant Android app where entering a phone number or email address verification code and proceeding would incorrectly duplicate the entered value for the other verification type.
Crash when requesting the verification code twice in a row
Related to the previous issue, we addressed a crash on the participant Android app that occurred when users requested a code for one verification type twice in a row.

🔍 Reflecting on the Impact

Your experience with Avicenna is crucial to our growth. Each update aims to streamline your research, focusing on usability and efficiency. We strive to support your research effectively.

📣 We Value Your Feedback – And Your Stories

Have the updates improved your research? We encourage sharing your experiences on our Community Forum or via email. Your feedback helps shape our future updates and motivates the Avicenna community.

⭐ What's Next?

We remain dedicated to improving Avicenna. New features are in the pipeline, aiming to further enhance your research workflow. To name a few upcoming features, we're introducing:

Reset Participation: As a next step to the Test Participants feature we introduced above, test participants will be able to reset their participation and start as new participants in the study right within the app.
PII (Personally Identifiable Information): No need to contact Avicenna support to enable/disable PII for your study anymore. We are bringing the toggle to your dashboard.
Export Survey Media-Based Responses: Soon, your survey response exports will include media-based responses such as images, audio, and videos. This should enhance the comprehensiveness of your data exports.
Page Activity URL with Placeholders: Have you ever wanted to display different web pages to participants based on unique attributes like their participant ID? Get ready to watch the magic unfold with this new feature!
Working Memory Updating Task: The introduction of this new cognitive task will enable you to add another layer of activity to your study, providing participants with engaging tasks while you gain valuable insights from their performance.
And more: Stay tuned for additional features and improvements as we continue our mission to optimize your research experience.

Avicenna is about to get even better, and we're excited to reveal all the improvements to you.

Let's keep pushing the boundaries of research together.