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REDCap: Version Upgrade to 15.6.1
The REDCap upgrade to version 15.6.1 will occur on:
Tuesday, Sept 23rd - Global Health REDCap
Tuesday, Sept 30th 2025 - WISC REDCap
 Improvements |
 Bug Fixes |
Improvements
There are several new improvements available with this upgrade:
- MyCap App Improvements
- Form Display Logic Improvements
- Custom CSS styling for individual forms and surveys
- Record limit for development projects
- Alerts and Notifications - Pause recurring alerts
- New Action Tags: @SAVE-PROMPT-EXEMPT, @SAVE-PROMPT-EXEMPT-WHEN-AUTOSET
- Online Designer Updates
- Other Notable Improvements
MyCap App Improvements - https://kb.wisc.edu/smph/informatics/130328:
- The Form Display Logic setup dialog now contains a new option for MyCap-enabled projects: "Enable support for MyCap App".
- Checking this checkbox will cause all FDL conditions to be applied in the MyCap app. This is a good way to use conditional logic to disable specific MyCap tasks in the app for MyCap participants.
- Checking this checkbox will cause all FDL conditions to be applied in the MyCap app. This is a good way to use conditional logic to disable specific MyCap tasks in the app for MyCap participants.
- Latitude and Longitude fields (via action tags @latitude and @longitude) are now compatiable with MyCap.
- This can be used inside MyCap tasks when participants open a task in the MyCap app.
- This can be used inside MyCap tasks when participants open a task in the MyCap app.
- The Contacts, Links, and About pages for MyCap are now Data Access Group specific.
- You can provide different content for those pages for participants in different DAGs. In the MyCap app, participants assigned to a DAG will see DAG-specific information, and any information not assigned to any DAG will be visible for all participants.
- You can provide different content for those pages for participants in different DAGs. In the MyCap app, participants assigned to a DAG will see DAG-specific information, and any information not assigned to any DAG will be visible for all participants.
- Signature fields are now compatible with the MyCap app.
- In previous versions, Signature fields could not be used in the MyCap app.
Form Display Logic Improvements:
- The Form Display Logic setup dialog now contains a new option for MyCap-enabled projects: "Enable support for MyCap App".
- Checking this checkbox will cause all FDL conditions to be applied in the MyCap app. This is a good way to use conditional logic to disable specific MyCap tasks in the app for MyCap participants.
- Checking this checkbox will cause all FDL conditions to be applied in the MyCap app. This is a good way to use conditional logic to disable specific MyCap tasks in the app for MyCap participants.
- For longitudinal projects with repeating events, Form Display Logic (FDL) can now be utilized within a specific repeating event.
- For example, if the FDL references a field inside a repeating event, that field can be used to reference a value in a specific repeating instance of the event, including the current instance (e.g., keep form X enabled if [field][previous-instance] = "1" or [field2][current-instance] > 30).
- This provides more flexibility so that forms within individual instances of a repeating event can be enabled/disabled via FDL at the instance level. In previous versions, FDL could not work at the instance level but merely applied the FDL to all repeating instances of a given repeating event as a whole.
- Note: This improvement only applies to repeating events and not to repeating instruments.
Custom CSS Styling
CSS is a styling programming language used for websites and other tools. You may now optionally define custom CSS styling for an individual survey on the Survey Settings page, and on the field-level Online Designer page may define custom CSS styling for that data entry form. The form and survey CSS are separate controls that are only applied on a data entry form and survey page, respectively.
- CSS for Data Entry Form
- CSS for Survey Settings
The form-level CSS setting (but not the survey CSS setting) is subject to draft mode when in production status, and if a change is made to the form-level custom CSS, a side-by-side comparison of the changes can be seen on the draft mode project modifications review page before the drafted changes are approved.
The survey-level custom CSS setting on a given survey can be easily copied to other surveys in the project using the "Copy design to other surveys" button on the Survey Settings page.
Note: Use with caution. Please note that targeting internal REDCap elements (e.g., specific classes or IDs) may break without notice, as updates to REDCap can change or remove these elements at any time. Stability of these selectors across versions is not guaranteed, and any changes to them will not be announced in advance.
Record Limit for Development Projects
A new limit of 30 records will be applied for projects in Development project status. Development status is used for projects developing and creating their instruments and workflow and should not be used for real data collection.
Once the 30 record limit is met, a warning message will be displayed in the project's interface to inform users that more records cannot be created in the project after the record limit has been met, and you will be prevented from creating any new records in the project.
This record limit is only enforced on projects in development status. Once a project is in production or is inactive, this check will not be performed.
Important Notes:
- If you attempt to create a new record after the limit has been reached (whether via data import, API, REDCap::saveData(), or a Project XML file containing records), you will be presented with an error message saying the operation could not complete because the max record limit has been met already.
- If a project was in production status but then an administrator moved it back into development, it will now be subject to this record limit.
- If this setting is enabled on a project that has already exceeded the record limit, it will not affect any existing records in the project but will merely prevent new records from being created.
- Public Surveys in Development: If your project is in Development, is currently collecting data via a public survey, and the project has already met the record limit, this will effectively shut down the public survey and prevent any new responses from being entered.
Alerts & Notifications - Pause Recurring Alerts
For alerts that are triggered by conditional logic, in which the alert has the "Ensure logic is still true..." checkbox checked, you can now utilize a new checkbox option titled "Allow pausing of recurrences? (Existing interval will continue if the logic becomes true again after becoming false.)".
This setting is optional for Alerts & Notifications.
When enabled together with the 'Ensure logic is still true...' setting, REDCap will pause (instead of deleting) any already-scheduled recurrences of this alert when the alert's logic becomes false. This is useful if you expect the logic to become true again in the future. This may be the case specifically with time-based logic, such as datediff().
New Action Tags - https://kb.wisc.edu/smph/informatics/88613:
- @SAVE-PROMPT-EXEMPT
- This action tag is useful for preventing the "Save your changes?" warning prompt under certain conditions when navigating away from a data entry form or survey page. Adding this to a field will prevent any changes to the field's value from individually triggering the "Save your changes?" prompt when someone navigates away from the page without clicking the Save button.
- This would typically be used on fields where the value of the field being saved is not important unless other field data is also entered - e.g., when prefilling a "Last modified by" field that has both @READONLY and @SETVALUE="[user-name]".
- Warning: Use with care, as inadvertent data loss could occur ONLY for fields in which this action tag is implemented if a user navigates off the page without clicking Save.
- This action tag is useful for preventing the "Save your changes?" warning prompt under certain conditions when navigating away from a data entry form or survey page. Adding this to a field will prevent any changes to the field's value from individually triggering the "Save your changes?" prompt when someone navigates away from the page without clicking the Save button.
- @SAVE-PROMPT-EXEMPT-WHEN-AUTOSET
- This action tag is similar to the @SAVE-PROMPT-EXEMPT action tag, but its effect is limited to the initial setting of a field's value when the value is blank at the time the form/survey page is loaded.
- Use this action tag to prevent action tags such as @DEFAULT, @SETVALUE, @TODAY, or @NOW from triggering the "Save your changes?" prompt when someone navigates away from the page without clicking the Save button.
- Please note that when using this action tag, if this or another field's value is later modified on the page, the "Save your changes?" prompt will be displayed because this action tag only affects the individual field's ability to trigger the warning prompt and only during the initial setting of the field's value.
- Warning: Use with care, as inadvertent data loss could occur ONLY for fields in which this action tag is implemented if you navigate off the page without clicking Save.
- This action tag is similar to the @SAVE-PROMPT-EXEMPT action tag, but its effect is limited to the initial setting of a field's value when the value is blank at the time the form/survey page is loaded.
Online Designer Updates
- An instrument's label and unique instrument name can be modified using new tools in the Online Designer.
- In the field-view page in the Online Designer, the form name is displayed and clickable at the top of the page, and when clicked, it displays a popup to allow you to modify the instrument label and/or the unique instrument name.
- Additionally, clicking the Rename option from the "Choose action" drop-down list next to an instrument in the instrument-view page of the Online Designer will display the popup with the same options. This allows you the ability to modify both or either attribute independently of each other and prevents REDCap from automatically changing the unique instrument name whenever modifying the instrument label while in development status.
- In the field-view page in the Online Designer, the form name is displayed and clickable at the top of the page, and when clicked, it displays a popup to allow you to modify the instrument label and/or the unique instrument name.
- In longitudinal projects, the Online Designer now shows a warning next to any instruments that are not designated for any events.
- Additionally, it provides a link to navigate to the Designate Instruments page if you have Project Design privileges.
- Additionally, it provides a link to navigate to the Designate Instruments page if you have Project Design privileges.
- More survey-specific status indicators have been added to the "Enabled as survey" table column in the instrument-view of the Online Designer.
- Includes icons for e-Consent and Stop Actions. These denote that the survey has e-Consent enabled and has Stop Actions in the survey, respectively.
- Additionally, the other status indicators (i.e., for Survey Auto-Continue and Repeating Surveys) have been made slightly smaller to accommodate space for the newer icons in that column.
Other Notable Improvements
Custom Reports
- On the Edit Report page, Step 2 now has a "Quick Set" feature that allows you to add or replace report fields by pasting field names from the clipboard or by entering manually. Additionally, the existing "Quick Add" feature now has links to copy all or selected field names to the clipboard.
Repeating Instruments
- You can now specify the custom paging size for the repeating instrument popups/tables seen on the Record Home Page, Record Status Dashboard, and left-hand project menu. This will allow you to control the size of the instance tables in case they want to see more instances all at once on the page.
Bug Fixes
Notable Bug Fixes - Issues addressed with this upgrade
Bug fix: In the "Compose Survey Invitations" dialog, when selecting a previously sent email, links in the email would remain in the template. When selecting a previously sent email, the subject will be restored as well (only when empty in the "Compose message" section). The drop-down now shows up to 20 chars of the subject and "(not sent yet)" as the timestamp for scheduled messages.
Bug fix: If calculations, CALCTEXT, or branching logic references the form status field for the current form, in which the form currently has a gray status icon, the calc/logic would return an inconsistent value for the form status field compared to when the same calc/logic is utilized on another instrument or on the survey version of the current instrument. In this case, the current form would mistakenly report the form status value as being "0", while other forms would report it to be blank. Going forward, if the form has a gray status icon, all references to the form's form status field will report it as having a blank value.
Bug fix: In some contexts when trying to close certain dialogs using the X icon/button at the top-right of the dialog, the dialog would mistakenly not close.
Bug fix: When at least one adaptive instruments is used within a Production REDCap project, all subsequent instruments would be listed as adaptive in the Online Designer, even when the following instruments were not adaptive. The adaptive indicator would disappear after entering draft mode.
Bug fix: The QuickEdit dialog in the Online Designer mistakenly allowed matrix fields to be moved outside of the matrix group, leading to unpredictable/unwanted side effects.