Central Designer – Troubleshooting Tips

If an edit check or function fails to behave as expected, it is time to use your ‘troubleshooting’ skills. The following tips may help you when you are troubleshooting rules in InForm:

Rules:

• check if rules are running
• check the rule logic
• check Rule Dependencies: a rule on a form has access to items on that form, but not other forms or other visits
• check InForm machine’s Application Event Log

Though some vendors will correct major problems with their products by releasing entirely new versions, other vendors may fix minor bugs by issuing patches, small software updates that address problems detected by users or developers.

Check the release notes for Central Designer for known problems. The release notes provide descriptions and workaround solutions for known problems.

Remember that there is a report available you can run “Data Entry Rule Actions Report”. This report outputs all data entry rules in CSV format and can be formatted into an edit check specification documentation for QA testing.

A rule can be written in more than one way, which makes it difficult to impose any restrictions:

Scenario: Route item has 3 choices. OP, SC and IV. Query should fire if the user does not choose either OP or SC. This rule could be written in many ways:

–Value = route.Value

If (value == 3)

–Value = route.Value == 3

If (value == true)

–Value = !(route.Value == 3)

If (value == false)

–Value = (route.Value == 1 || route.Value == 2)

If (value == false)

–Value = route.Value !=1 && route.Value != 2

If (value == true)

Keep it consistent across the trial. Do not overuse the conditional statements when a simple range check should be program.

Note: Be aware that if you want to reuse a rule that uses data from a logical schema in another study, the other study must also contain the logical schema.

If you have explored most of the obvious possibilities and still
cannot get your rule / edit check to work, ask someone in your team to peer review the build.

 

Test Cases

• unit test your code
• context available for defining test cases
• Site name, date/time, locale; Form associations; Empty values; Unknown dates; Repeating objects
• test case results: Pass or Fail based on expected results
• perform formal QA / QT

Remember to check the Event log via Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer

Reference Document : Central Designer – Rule Troubleshooting.pdf

Your comments and questions are valued and encouraged.
Anayansi Gamboa has an extensive background in clinical data management as well as experience with different EDC systems including Oracle InForm, InForm Architect, Central Designer, CIS, Clintrial, Medidata Rave, Central Coding, OpenClinica, Open Source and Oracle Clinical.

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