Desigining Flows

This section addresses additional design considerations for users who are building RapidPro flows that will be imported as TracPro polls.

See the RapidPro knowledge base for detailed instructions on how to use the RapidPro flow editor tool.

Rules

Rules are the directives that categorize a contact’s responses to an SMS message. A rule set is the ordered group of rules that are applied to a response; the first applicable rule determines the response’s category and therefore the next step the user will visit in the flow.

RapidPro flow steps correspond with TracPro questions. TracPro stores the rules that are associated with the flow step in order to determine all answer categories that are available for the question. In the case of numeric questions, TracPro uses the rules to categorize calculated values, for example to determine the category of the question’s average answer.

Numeric rules

Several rule types address numeric input:

If the message response...

  • is a number
  • has a number equal to X
  • has a number greater than X
  • has a number less than X
  • has a number between X and Y

The between test is inclusive of its endpoints - that is, the rule has a number between 5 and 10 would match the inputs “5” and “10”. The greater than and less than tests are not inclusive - that is, neither has a number greater than 5 nor has a number less than 5 would match the input “5”.

When numeric input is expected, flow designers should determine the minimum and maximum valid values and ensure that all possible numeric within the range is covered. Even if you only expect integer responses, you should design rules that can categorize arbitrary values, for example the average answer value.

Consider this common rule set description:

  • If the response is a number equal to 0, then categorize as “zero”
  • If the response is a number between 1 and 4, then categorize as “1-4”
  • If the response is a number between 5 and 10, then categorize as “5-10”
  • If the response is a number greater than 10, categorize as “11+”
  • Otherwise, categorize as “Other”
../_images/incorrect-category-setup.png

This set-up will work well when collecting data from contacts. However, if the average value calculated on TracPro is 0.5 or 4.5, then it will be categorized as “Other”. To prevent this situation while maintaining the intended meaning for integer input, adjust the categories above:

  • If the response is a number equal to 0, then categorize as “zero”
  • If the response is a number between 0 and 4, then categorize as “1-4”
  • If the response is a number between 4 and 10, then categorize as “5-10”
  • If the response is a number greater than 10, then categorize as “11+”
  • Otherwise, categorize as “Other”
../_images/correct-category-setup.png