Welcome to ODK's Docs!

ODK is a suite of open source tools that help organizations collect and manage data.

For a quick start, read Getting Started With ODK. In most cases, users of ODK:

• Create survey forms using the XLSForm standard in Excel or Google Sheets.
• Upload forms to an ODK Central server.
• Download forms into ODK Collect on an Android device.
• Use Collect to fill out forms with participants.
• Upload survey data from Collect to Central.
• Analyze or export data from Central.

This requires:

• Installing Collect on an Android device
• Installing Central on a server

While this is the recommended workflow, it is not the only way to do things. ODK is a very flexible set of tools, and organizations will find their own best practices for adopting it.

Additional ODK tools are:

• ODK Aggregate, a proven server. We now generally recommend Central but those with existing Aggregate servers may choose to continue using them.
• ODK Build, a drag-and-drop form designer. We generally recommend XLSForm for its flexibility but users only building very simple forms may prefer Build.
• ODK Briefcase, a desktop tool that pulls and exports data from Aggregate and Collect.

The specifications and libraries that power the tools are:

• OpenRosa, APIs for how ODK clients communicate with ODK servers.
• ODK XForms spec, a subset of the W3C XForms specification, for use in the ODK ecosystem.
• ODK JavaRosa, a Java library that renders forms complying with ODK XForms.
• XLSForm spec, a high-level Excel-based form specification.
• pyxform, a Python library that converts XLSForms into ODK XForms.

For a complete list of our tools, check out ODK on GitHub.