See what’s happening as it happens, on data your team can trust. Spot what’s slipping, keep records clean, and get the right insight to the right person in time.
Every project ships with reporting on day one. From there you can build your own reports, feed a live dashboard, or load the whole dataset into a warehouse.
Three ways program data leaves the field and reaches a decision. Most teams use all three: a dashboard for the daily check, an export for the funder, a live feed for the analyst.
Open a report in the browser. Nothing to install, nothing to download, no analyst in the loop.
Get the data out as a file, once or on repeat, with the filters you set the first time still applied.
Point your own tools at CommCare so the dashboard refreshes itself, no download step in the middle.
What works at a thousand rows breaks at a million. Two questions decide your setup: how the data leaves CommCare, and how much of the analysis is automated.
| Method | Works well up to | What you need |
|---|---|---|
| Emailed reports | Small datasets | Nothing. A saved report lands in the inbox on a schedule you set. |
| Data exports | 50,000 rows | Excel. Export form or case data on demand, with filters saved for next time. |
| Daily saved exports | 100,000 rows | Excel. The file refreshes every 24 hours, so the link you share stays current. |
| OData feeds | 500,000 rows | Power BI or Tableau Desktop. A live connection, so the dashboard refreshes itself. |
| Data Export Tool | A million rows and up | Python, a database, and someone comfortable on the command line. Refreshes incrementally and feeds business intelligence tools. |
Once a project passes about 50,000 rows, it is worth revisiting both questions. Teams running large datasets usually graduate from downloads to a live feed. See the full comparison on the CommCare Help Site, or explore integrations.
A theft spotted the moment it happened
The Coffee Gardens tracks more than 1,000 smallholder coffee farmers in Uganda, from the washing station to final export. When stock went missing from a warehouse, real-time submissions checked against the team’s own algorithms flagged the discrepancy immediately, and because they saw it right away they could act right away: a full insurance payout, innocent staff cleared, a community-wide deterrent set.
Read the case study ↗“The tools you’re using can warn you that there are gaps, but you have to follow up to solve those gaps immediately. You have to be checking the data daily.”
Shakeel Padamsey, Co-Founder, The Coffee Gardens
A dashboard is only as honest as the data underneath it. CommCare gives program staff the tools to correct records themselves, without filing a ticket.
Find a case in the Case List report, open it, and edit its properties directly. Typos and mis-taps get fixed at the source, so every report downstream picks up the correction.
Documentation →When the same mistake repeats across hundreds of records, update them together in one pass instead of opening each case one at a time.
Documentation →Configure your own rules for what counts as a duplicate, review the matches in the Case List Explorer, then merge, archive, or delete. Your beneficiary counts stop double counting.
Documentation →Test submissions and known-bad forms can be archived so they drop out of reports and exports, and restored later if you need the audit trail.
Documentation →Limit any report or export by mobile worker, case sharing group, location, or date range, and the filter sticks the next time you run it.
Documentation →A walkthrough of how program teams find, fix, and prevent bad data in CommCare, from validation in the form to cleanup in the report.
Watch the webinar →Four teams, four very different reporting setups, from role-specific dashboards for one country office to a dashboard estate spanning a hundred.
Power BILive Power BI dashboards across more than 250 programs in over 100 countries, on one officially preferred platform.
Read the story ↗
Role-Based ViewsBuilt role-specific dashboards so a supervisor, a district lead, and headquarters each see the view they can act on.
Read the story ↗
Impact ReportingProgram data across 117 programs worldwide, with 1,760 users trained, used as evidence to prove effectiveness and win funding.
Read the story ↗
One StandardReplaced a patchwork of disconnected data tools with one platform, so frontline numbers finally compare across countries.
Read the story ↗