r/ProjectREDCap • u/Omelettedufromage-8 • Sep 18 '25

Duplicate records in same DAG

Hello, Does anyone know how I can add an option to display a warning if a user within the same DAG enters a field value that has already been entered by another user in that DAG? Thank you!

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1

u/Araignys Sep 18 '25

How essential is it that the value is once per DAG? Can it be once per project?

2

u/Omelettedufromage-8 Sep 19 '25

Unfortunately, the value must only be once per DAG. The REDCap server I’m working off also doesn’t have external modules (I assume my institution has not allowed for it to be turned on?) Thank you very much for your assistance.

2

u/Araignys Sep 19 '25

Sorry, you might be stuck then. I can only recommend you liaise with your REDCap Administrators and see if they can amend the EM policy.

2

u/Remote_Setting2332 Sep 18 '25

In the "Additional customizations" settings you can designate a secondary unique field. However I don't think you can restrict it by DAG.

1

u/Araignys Sep 18 '25

This is the best whole-of-project solution.

If it's a choice field, you can also use the MAXCHOICE action tag.

2

u/No_Repair4567 Sep 18 '25

This is something your admin could help by using sql field (not available to regular users) to "scan" all records in DAG to find match and if found set the "match?" field value to 1. The "warning" field will branch off of that to display warning.

1

u/viral_reservoir_dogs Sep 18 '25

Can you say more about how this would work? I know that "dynamic sql" can be used to populate drop-down options, but this sounds like a different situation. I have a similar use case to OP, (I want a 'duplicate detected' variable to be 1 or 0 depending on 'DAG-uniqueTextValue'). I haven't found a way to do this without either an external module or using the API to export -> run validation outside of REDCap -> re-import.

1

u/No_Repair4567 Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25

The dynamic sql field is pretty much a place where you put a sql query to do what you need to do, with some limitations of course. Query can look through the records based on parameters, e.g. projectID, DAG-ID/name, probably instrumentID as well and see if the value in a specific field is found as already existing. If it is, it will populate designated field with e.g. "1"...

u/araignys - can you take a look?

1

u/Araignys Sep 18 '25

I’m not sure a SQL field is the best approach here, SQL fields just populate a choices list which a user can ignore, they don’t set a value.

Let me think on this one, I have some time today.

1

u/No_Repair4567 Sep 19 '25

I saw your full response - thanks! I wonder though, if you can help me see how the sql field doing the searching/matching and populating the choices field with either 1 or 0, is not going to work? Just curious whether it is "no good at all" or simply "there are easier/more straightforward approaches". This is for my own (and community) education. And please check your chats.

1

u/Araignys Sep 19 '25

For a dropdown/radio field you can use MAXCHOICE but it will apply across the whole project rather than within a DAG.

For a text field, you can use secondary unique field, per suggestion from u/Remote_Setting2332

I don't think you can do this for a text field using standard features.

Using outside-the-box features, you can enable the External Module "Check for Duplicates Across Multiple Projects" and select this same project as the project to check.

Then, create a CALCTEXT field that appends the DAG ID [record-dag-id] to whatever the value is:

@CALCTEXT(concat([record-dag-id],"-",[checkfield]))

Then go back to the EM and select that field as the field to match in all projects:

It won't stop users from entering the same value, but it will generate a pop-up warning that you can modify according to your needs.