The New Magpi: Making Mobile Data Collection Easier

Joel Selanikio
5 min readJun 2, 2021

It’s been my experience of software development that it’s a bit of a rollercoaster: you work hard to release something great, are thrilled with what you’ve produced, and then after some years you realize that it’s time to start the process again. Magpi’s been through this cycle several times in our nearly 20 year history — and once again we’re thrilled to release a new version.

This new version of Magpi, like those that came before it, is a product of the times, incorporating better integrations, chat, QR codes, and more useful dashboard visualizations.

Integration: Introducing Magpi Publish

Back in our early days, the most common way to integrate two pieces of software was to hire programmers to write custom code, an expensive and time-consuming process. Nowadays, we connect software all the time just by point and click, and the new Magpi is no exception. We’ve kept all our old integration tricks, and added a few new ones.

Magpi’s new Publish feature, found in the Data tab for any form, allows users to connect their Magpi data with any Google Sheet or online Excel spreadsheet — no coding required. You’ll just need to connect your Google or Microsoft account with Magpi, then tell Magpi which spreadsheet you’d like your data sent to. After that, data in your Magpi form will be automatically synchronized with that spreadsheet. And this feature is available to anyone with a Pro or Enterprise account.

Of course, Magpi users can still take advantage of our no-code Zapier integration to connect Magpi with thousands of other tools, or if you’re dying to show off your programming skills you can dive into our API to make the magic happen. Or if you’re using Microsoft’s fantastic PowerBI tool for visualization, integration with Magpi is another no-code piece of cake.

The point is that Magpi now provides easy integration for everyone, to every software tool, whether you’re a programmer or more of an email person.

Power Dashboard

Magpi’s had great reporting tools for years now, that let you create beautiful, real-time dashboards and visualizations of your data. Even so, Magpi’s built-in dashboard (the part where you saw your forms listed out) was definitely in need of an update. Because if you’re managing a data collection process, whether that’s a one-time thing or an ongoing operation, you don’t just want to see a list of form names. You want actionable information about your data processes.

Magpi’s new Power Dashboard delivers that:

  • automatic duration calculation — want to know which of your data collectors is the fastest, and which is the slowest? We’ve got you.
  • automatic collected records — want to know which of your data collectors is most productive, and who hasn’t started yet? Done.
  • automatic data maps — want to see exactly where your data is being collected? Yep, we’ve got that, too.

Plus zoomable data graphs, user-configurable layout, and some new modules that are right around the corner, like Team Tracker: see exactly what path your field staff are taking during their day.

We’ll also be opening the dashboard up later this year to allow you to design your own modules, or add your own logo or other info.

And the best part is that this great new dashboard functionality is available to all users — from the $250/month Basic account all the way up to Enterprise.

Magpi Chat

Magpi’s new Chat surveys work on every phone — with no per-message costs

Our users love our SMS-based data collection tools, except for one thing: the cost per message of SMS is high — even one cent per message adds up quickly! This is why most of us now use “text chat” tools that look a lot like SMS but which send their data over the internet, not the phone system: Apple Messaging, WhatsApp, Line, Telegraph, and all the rest. These text-like chat tools have dramatically lower costs

To bring that cost-savings and functionality to Magpi, we’re building chat-based data collection right into Magpi, with all the strengths of our interactive SMS-based system — no app to install, works on even non-smart phones — plus low, low cost.

Available to all Pro and Enterprise users!

Easy Form Sharing with QR Codes

Many of us have used QR codes more in the last year than ever before, as restaurants required us to scan QRs to pull up menus on our phones. As an easy method to point a customer in the physical world to somewhere online, it’s unbeatable.

Well, we decided “why not do that with Magpi?” So starting with the new version of Magpi, all Magpi forms — for all users — come with a URL and QR code that points your customers straight to an online version of that form. You could share the URL by text or email, or post the QR code on a physical sign (as in the restaurant menu example), and in 2 seconds anyone can be filling in your Magpi form — even if they have never heard of Magpi, and have no Magpi account.

Just one more way to more easily get the right data, from the right people.

What’s Next

The new Magpi is now released in beta, and we’d love you to check it out. You can view all your own forms in it — but do remember it’s a beta and do all your real work in our existing app version at app.magpi.com.

Over the next months we’ll be fine-tuning, bug-fixing, and releasing new features (audit logs, multi-language support) — and some old features that aren’t in the beta yet (like Reports).

Most importantly we’ll be listening to feedback from you on what is working and what needs to change.

Click here to learn more about the new Magpi!

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Joel Selanikio

TED/Davos/keynote speaker, Lemelson/WSJ winner, Magpi co-founder, Ebola doc, Airbnb’er. AI, big data, digital health, global health.