As organizations grow, many outgrow tools like KoboToolbox, SurveyCTO, or Taroworks and need a more professional platform. CommCare is a robust, SOC 2-certified system built for scale, offering advanced functionality like case management, offline data collection, and integrations to support more complex and evolving needs.

Transitioning to CommCare involves replicating or improving your existing workflows, forms, and user access within the platform, as well as migrating any historical data you want to retain. A successful transition ensures that field teams and data operations continue with minimal disruption while taking advantage of CommCare’s expanded capabilities.

To assist organizations who are transitioning to CommCare, the following tools are available:

1. CommCare offers robust documentation for each of these steps and partners can easily follow instructions to get the latest updated values of their data from a previous tool into CommCare through self-service.

2. All users are highly encouraged to completeDimagi Academy courses and go through the CommCare Help Site andUser Forum to familiarize themselves with the platform. 

3. CommCare Onboarding - Dimagi’s Customer Success team is well positioned to support new partners in setting up CommCare to receive data from a previous tool. Please contact us at [email protected] for more information and the best suited plan for this support.

This guide provides step-by-step instructions to help organizations easily transition to CommCare on their own.

We want transitioning to CommCare to be as accessible as possible for any organization, regardless of size or technical experience. The instructions throughout this guide are designed to work for any paid CommCare plan, with a focus on helping organizations fully leverage the $100/month Standard Plan, CommCare’s most affordable option.

In order to get ready to transition to CommCare, make sure you take the following steps:

1. Sign up for or log in to yourCommCare HQ account.

2. Choose a software plan, as described here.

3. Choose a project space to work in (or create a new one).

4. Decide whether the app you want to build will be for

   1. Surveys: No case management, good for one-time surveys

   2. A longitudinal application that leverages

The first step in your CommCare journey involves recreating your existing data collection instruments within the CommCare platform. CommCare’s intuitive Form Builder allows you to do this in two ways, described below. When transitioning your forms, keep in mind:

• You can choose to replicate your forms exactly as they were in your previous system, or take this opportunity to review and improve your workflows for better efficiency (recommended)

• Consider how to move any skip logic, constraints, and calculations from your previous system into CommCare.

• If you weren’t previously using case management, now is a good time to consider whether tracking individuals, households, or other entities over time could strengthen your program. More on this below.

If you wish to recreate your form on CommCare question by question, you can use the Form Builder. The form builder lets you design your:

• Forms: Digitize your questionnaires and data entry points with a variety of question types (text, numeric, select-one, select-multiple, etc.). Use multiple language support to build applications in more than one language.

• Workflows: Define the logical flow of your application, including skip logic, validation rules, and conditional display of questions.

• Lookup Tables: Create lookup tables to reference larger data sets in your application.

• App Summary: Use CommCare’s built in App Summary to see your entire application structure, individual form content and case configuration in one place and export it for further analysis.

Once you download an XML file, you can upload the form into any kind of CommCare form (survey, registration form or follow-up form).

You can read more about this process here.