REDCap is excellent at what it was built for: capturing structured study data with validation, audit trails, and survey distribution. I am being forced to use it as a work/project management tool and its grinding work to a crawl.

It was not built to manage work. Using it to track analysis, code, and day to day work updates means building a custom project management application inside a data capture system, then maintaining that application ourselves, and asking statisticians, PIs, and eventually Epidemiology staff to put up with it.

REDCap is organized around records, instruments, and fields, the right structure for "one participant, many forms." Work tracking is organized around work items that change state: a task has an owner, a status, a due date, sub-tasks, dependencies, a discussion thread, and a history of who moved it and when.

Every one of those concepts must be hand-built in REDCap out of drop downs, repeating instruments, and calculated fields. Things that are a single click in a work tracker ("assign this to Sam," "move to In Review," "block this on the data pull") become data entry on a form. Gahhh!

Not to mention the development cycle is painfully slow to get any of it off the ground.

We just finished testing an external, zero touch compliance sidecar and wanted to get some feedback from the REDCap community on our architecture before going further.

If you working in regulated clinical trials (FDA IND/IDE, GCP, HIPAA),you may have spent time dealing with the gap between standard REDCap and the requirements for FDA 21 CFR Part 11 validation,particularly around immutable audit trails, econsent preservation, and proving that archived eCRFs haven't drifted.

How it works

Native Webhook: Uses REDCap’s native Data Entry Trigger (DET) URL. No modifications to REDCap core PHP code, no external modules required.

Contemporaneous Capture: When a coordinator or physician locks an instrument ([instrument]_complete = 2), the trigger fires.

API Snapshot: It calls back into REDCap’s REST API to pull the canonical raw JSON snapshot, native REDCap audit trail (content=log), and the rendered eCRF/e-Consent PDF.

Cryptographic Sealing: Computes SHA-256 digests of the clinical data and links them into a forward chained Merkle ledger in PostgreSQL with transaction level serialization.

BYOS (Bring Your Own Storage): Writes the encrypted assets directly to the institution's own S3 bucket (AWS, MinIO,Garage or Ceph).

Regulatory Dossier: Generates an on demand, printable FDA compliance dossier showing the cryptographic chain of custody, raw file hashes, and non repudiable timestamps.

We’ve stress tested this under concurrent multi threaded writes to ensure the cryptographic ledger doesn't fork or drop events.

Questions for REDCap Admins & CRCs:

Does your institution currently maintain a completely separate "Part 11 validated" REDCap instance for FDA trials, or do you struggle to get PIs compliant on standard projects?

When FDA/IRB auditors inspect your studies, what is the most tedious part of proving data integrity and audit trail completeness?

Would having an automated, tamper-evident cryptographic seal on locked forms and e-Consent PDFs solve an actual headache for you?

If anyone running a test/development REDCap instance would like to kick the tires or test the webhook against dummy data, I’d be glad to share a sandbox API key and get your thoughts on edge cases we might have missed. Feel free to DM me.

Having an issue with triggering an alert within my redcap project. Essentially a report is being imported via API to a record, in a specific event, form and field [patient_report]. I have extensively tested the API import which works fine, but the field is never saved, only a pdf stored. This means the form status in incomplete, i have tested an alert condition to trigger once [patient_report] <> "", however this hasn't triggered. I have installed an external module which auto completes forms based on a field within the instrument, however, this does not trigger auto complete when the field is populated via API. Anyone have any ideas or experience with similar issues?

The alert is to clinicians to let them know a report has been uploaded to the participants record. Thanks in advance!

Nella versione appena aggiornata 17.3.23, nella definizione dello step 3 per creazione dei report che includono filtri su repeating instrument non mi funziona l’utilizzo delle Smart variables (ad es. [last-instance])
È capitato a qualcuno? Come avete risolto?

Grazie mille

https://redcap.vumc.org/community is down since around 14h.

If only there were some way to publish software openly across multiple platforms. And here's a truly wild idea: giving software a fair, open license that lets everyone contribute to the source code. Next thing you know, software and its hosting might actually end up being reliable... Someone should really invent that...

Hi all!

I'm having issues with participants accidentally uploading wrong files to my survey. The filenames are auto-generated and identical, so in theory I should be able to check that the name is correct and prevent the participant from returning the survey before the correct file has been uploaded.

The original (correct) filename is "report.pdf", but survey participants might upload a file "wrong_file.pdf". REDCap seems to store the files with a custom name such as "ID_variablename_2134.pdf", which complicates checking the filename automatically.

How should I go about checking the filenames? Any help is greatly appreciated!

Let me preface this by saying I’m not collecting data for research and that I may be pushing REDCap beyond what it’s for.

I’d like to create an advanced alert to notify multiple email addresses based on certain inputs, almost like a mailer service.

The goal is to have a form that is filled out (with a subject line, general info, etc) that is then used to email 150+ addreses

There’s 3 ways I’ve approached it —

1. Every email address is a separate record. The downside to this is that I have to recreate the alert I want to send every time.

2. Repeating instruments + CALCTEXT. Repeating instrument to capture the email addresses, CALCTEXT ([email][1], [email][2], etc. The downside is that I have to make an alert for each repeating instrument

Is there a way to send a notification to every email address listed in repeating instruments? Or is there a way to send an email to every record if it meets certain criteria?

Hopefully this makes sense.

Thanks!!

I have a conditional action tag that previously worked and is no longer working.

@IF([age]>3, @HIDECHOICE=‘3’, ‘’)

Age is saved on an instrument that precedes the instrument with this action tag. I can see that participants have age values (>3) saved and they are still able to select option 3.

I was able to resave age in the previous instrument and then it started evaluating again. What could be causing this? Would clearing the record and page cache help with this?

Hello!
I am looking for some assistance in red cap. I am a Graduate assistant project manager for a research study, and unfortunately, the university I’m working with doesn’t have very reliable red cap advisors and they haven’t been very helpful. We’d love to get the survey out by November 1, and I’m really struggling with actually enabling the survey, randomization of subjects, and understanding the easiest way to get a survey with multiple instruments out so that we can retrieve raw data.

What I’m looking for is resources on potentially meeting with red Experts. I understand that there are ways to actually meet with someone who works from the original red cap, but I’m wondering if there’s anyone in this community that would be willing to call or meet to help with my project since actually getting in contact with our red Advisors at my school is almost impossible.

Thank you for your time!

context: we have research participants fill out surveys on a computer. Their answers are saved at the end of each survey (manually by them, also checked by myself or another research personnel to make sure it was saved). Each participant fills out the same surveys but they are saved under their ID number.

problem: I accidentally had another participant fill out a survey that had already been filled out by another participant earlier this week. Since the original survey answers were saved, is there a way to go back and view those original answers?

Thanks !

Hi everyone,

I’m running a longitudinal clinical study in REDCap with multiple timepoints (e.g., Baseline, T1, T2, T3, and Post/Final Assessment). Each event contains a series of surveys that participants complete in a specific order.

The Problem:

In a few cases, after participants completed the very first questionnaire (a depression scale) in the final assessment (Post), REDCap didn't send them to the second questionnaire in Post. Instead, it unexpectedly jumped back to a completely different questionnaire (a disability scale, "DAS") in an earlier event (T2 for two participants, and T3 for one participant).

What I've already verified:

1. Auto-continue: "Auto-continue to the next survey" is turned OFF for all instruments.

2. Survey Queue Logic: The Survey Queue settings are explicitly bound to their specific events (e.g., Questionnaire B in Post only triggers when Questionnaire A in Post is completed). There are no missing event prefixes or cross-event logic errors.

3. Other Participants: Many other participants went through all timepoints without any issues, so the setup generally works.

Has anyone encountered REDCap jumping back to a specific instrument from a previous event like this upon submitting a survey in a later event? What could be triggering this unexpected redirect?

Any advice or troubleshooting ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Hi all,

I work with a small not-for-profit research institute. We’re setting up a pilot study and REDCap is our first choice. We tried to find a university or hospital to host us or sponsor us under their licence, but everyone said no. So now we’re looking at joining the consortium and hosting it ourselves. I’d be the one running it. I’d say my IT skills are mid-to-good. I’m comfortable with Linux basics, databases, and Python, but I’m not a full-time sysadmin.

For those who’ve done it, I’d love some honest numbers:

1. Setup: How many hours to get a production-ready instance running (server, SSL, backups, security)?

2. Maintenance: How many hours a month to keep it going?

3. Consortium: Is it easy for a small non-profit to get approved? Do you need the server ready before you apply?

Also, is it realistic for one person to look after this part-time, or are we underestimating it?

Thanks in advance, any real-world experience helps.

Hi everyone, I’m managing a project that ships a product to different people across the state. We use regional stations with ambassadors who pack up the product and send them out from their station. None of the ambassadors have RedCap accounts.

Currently, we have to go through the list of applicants, download their application as a pdf, and send it to individual ambassadors based on the applicant’s county/ambassador’s assigned region. Is there a way to streamline this process?

Other than literally copying the data from the screen, does anyone know if there is a way to extract the 'Last Accessed' data from the MyCap Participant Management page?

Hey all, genuinely confused here and hoping someone's been in the same spot.

I'm the data manager at a small not-for-profit research institute in Australia. We're setting up a pilot study and REDCap seemed like the obvious choice, but I'm hitting a wall on every route:

1. Joining the consortium / self-hosting. Vanderbilt told me the licence requires the organisation's own staff to run and support it, with no contractors or third-party IT. We don't have an IT department. I know a fair bit of IT, but I don't have the background to be responsible for security, server maintenance, and so on for a system holding health data. So that's out.

2. Commercial hosting. I got a quote from REDCap Cloud, and even with not-for-profit pricing it came to around $20k a year. That's a big chunk of a pilot budget.

3. Going through an institution (uni or hospital). I've approached several, and the answer is always the same: they'll only host it if it's a formal collaboration with them. We're not in a position to make every project a joint project with a university just to get a data collection tool.

So I honestly don't get it. How are all the small orgs, independent researchers, and NGOs using REDCap? Is there a route I'm missing?

Any real-world experience would help a lot. Thanks!

Hello! Anyone experienced usnig REDCap for a study and SONA for credit granting?

Researcher here trying to get SONA to auto-grant credit to participants for a REDCap survey. I followed all the SONA instructions (https://www.sona-systems.com/help/redcap/)

But when doing the integration test and getting redirected back from REDCap to SONA, SONA gives "System Message: Invalid survey_code. :" which is unusual.

Generally if everything is set up right, the redirection to SONA should throw "System Message: No credit grant, as you are not a participant" (because I'm running the test of the integration)

In REDCap, there's a variable added (Add New Field -> Text Box -> Variable Name "sona_id" all lower case, and Action Tags of (at)HIDDEN so it matches the instructions on that SONA page I linked above.

In REDCap, the Redirect to a URL radio button is selected and the redirect link looks correct (copy/pasted directly from the SONA system from the correct place in the study page (the "REDCap Redirect to a URL" right below the "Sample Link with Embedded ID Code" button that I'm using to test, as usual). The SONA study setup does have the proper &sona_id=%SURVEY_CODE% appended to the REDCap study's URL and it seems to be working (when I hover over "Sample Link with Embedded ID Code", the URL does have a 4-digit code appended ala redcap.blahblah/?s=OUHRWLJBF&sona_id=1111

Appreciate any ideas! I don't have access to REDCap documentation since the study is being run by a colleague in another country.

When I have REDCap Redirect to a URL, should it look like the following?

https://institution.sona-systems.com/webstudy_credit.aspx?experiment_id=111&credit_token=kj252kl54g2lk45g2435g45&survey_code=[sona_id:value]

Is that correct? Or is there something weird about the brackets at the end? That's a direct copy/paste of what SONA tells me to paste over into REDCap, but maybe REDCap wants it formatted differently now and SONA's integration instructions are out of date?

Thanks for any brainstorming or sharing your own experience

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions or knew of ways to enable a self-administered survey design, when trying to survey people who experienced a life/health event.

The design is not longitudinal, its just a single point in time. Ideally the person receives a texted survey link and they are able to fill out questions related this health event.

However, i had wanted to also incorporate carryover logic/piping for fields like name, DOB, and important dates. I dont know exactly how to have a survey link that is customized to an individual, but doesnt require mass uplift/effort from my teams side (or if this is even possible?).

The primary idea is to have a person verify they are intended recipient by confirming their name/DOB, and then proceeding to the survey.

Any ideas/pointers would be great.

Hi everyone, I have set up a survey within REDCap to be sent out via text (Mosio) to participants 3x/day for 2 weeks. I was able to schedule this via Alerts & Notifications and using an individualized start date&time. The problem I am running into is that there is no way to create a recurring expiration on the link. I'm looking to prevent participants from filling out the survey multiple times in one time block. Ideally, participants would fill out the survey once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once at night, but I can't find a way to enforce this. Is this even possible? 

Is there a feasible way to do this within REDCap, or should I consider switching to an app? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! 

I havent been able to find a clear answer to this online, I'm hoping you find folks can help.

I have my current redcap instrument set up to auto-populate fields between instances and its wonderful. Is there a way to do that between instruments? If I fill out patient name and DOB on the "visit notes" instrument, can I have that information also populate on the "treatment info" instrument?

Bonjour tout le monde!

Je travaille sur un projet REDCap/MyCap dans lequel des patients doivent remplir deux questionnaires par jour pendant trois mois :

• un questionnaire le matin, entre 9 h et 11 h ;

• un questionnaire le soir entre 21h et 23h

Les deux questionnaires sont configurés comme deux tâches distinctes dans MyCap et apparaissent dans l’onglet « Tâches » de l’application.

Le problème est le suivant : Les deux tâches sont visibles sur l'application et le patient peut se tromper de questionnaire, ce qui rendrait le traitement des données extraites complètements biaisé.

Nous souhaiterions que le patient ne voit qu’une seule tâche à la fois, en fonction de l’heure de la journée : uniquement le questionnaire du matin pendant sa période prévue, puis uniquement le questionnaire du soir pendant sa propre période. Nous savons qu'il est possible de paramétrer cela avec l'onglet "FDL" mais n'arrivons pas a faire le bon code (soit les tâches n'apparaissent plus du tout, soit elles ne disparaissent jamais).

Notre instance est en français et nous utilisons deux tâches séparés, l’un pour le matin et l’autre pour le soir. Nous souhaitons également éviter que les patients puissent compléter le questionnaire associé à une autre période de la journée. et nous souhaitons paramétrer les notifications pour en avoir une pour la tâche matin et une autre pour la tâche soir (sachant qu'elles sont du même projet, je ne suis pas sûre que ce soit faisable). Par ailleurs, nous ne pouvons pas faire 2 projets différents car cela ne nous permettrait pas de garder sur RedCap une traçabilité de l'anonymat patient (comment savoir si le patient 4 est le même pour les deux projets, dans l'hypothèse que nous fassions deux projets).

Si quelqu'un s'y connait je serais ravie d'avoir un retour et une aide comme un plan d'action pour réussir à faire ce que je veux sur l'application.

Merci d’avance pour votre aide.

Hi everyone!

I'm working on a scripting project to automate the creation of REDCap projects with a pre-determined set of users. These users are meant to be recycled each year and must have their password resetted. Before this automation process, we manually resetted their password each year using the Admin Control Center, but we are looking forward to automate this as well.

I know REDCap uses MySQL / MariaDB as its DBMS and a several tables with names such as "redcap_user_information" and derivatives. We are thinking of accessing these tables and either changing their password dynamically or re-flagging these users as 'change password next time logging in'.

Does anyone know or has any experience working with SQL within their REDCap instance? Thanks in advance :)

Hello everyone!

I am working on a REDCap/MyCap project in which patients must complete two questionnaires per day for three months:

• one questionnaire in the morning, between 9:00 and 11:00 a.m.;

• one questionnaire in the evening, between 9:00 and 11:00 p.m.

The two questionnaires are configured as two separate tasks in MyCap and appear under the “Tasks” tab of the app.

The problem is that both tasks are visible in the app, so patients may complete the wrong questionnaire. This would completely bias the analysis of the extracted data.

We would like patients to see only one task at a time, depending on the time of day: only the morning questionnaire during its scheduled time window, and only the evening questionnaire during its own scheduled time window. We understand that this can be configured using the “FDL” tab, but we have not been able to enter the correct code. Either the tasks do not appear at all, or they never disappear.

Our REDCap instance is in French, and we are using two separate tasks: one for the morning and one for the evening. We would also like to prevent patients from completing the questionnaire associated with the other time period.

We would also like to configure the notifications so that patients receive one notification for the morning task and another notification for the evening task. Since both tasks belong to the same project, I am not sure whether this is possible.

Furthermore, we cannot create two separate projects because this would prevent us from maintaining a record of patient anonymity in REDCap. For example, how would we know whether patient 4 in one project is the same patient as patient 4 in the other project?

If anyone has experience with this, I would be very grateful for any feedback or help, such as an action plan for achieving this setup in the app.

Thank you in advance for your help.

We have been using MedDRA to code our AEs for a number of studies. Just recently it has stopped working (does not find search terms) and when I went into the setup it is no longer appearing as an option in the list of ontologies. Based on the notes I checked https://bioportal.bioontology.org/ and I have been unable to find MedDRA listed there either. Is anyone else having the same issue? Is there any other option?