Grassroots Mobile Survey App: the Solution to Remote Fieldwork
What is the Grassroots Mobile Survey app?
Grassroots Mobile Survey (GRMS) started life as a proof-of-concept project for a nonprofit in India that could not find an affordable tool for offline fieldwork. Recognizing the need for similar capabilities at other nonprofits, GRMS was adopted by the Open Source Commons (OSC) with the goal of bringing free offline field survey capabilities to all nonprofits. The Open Source Commons is made up of teams of volunteers that work on solutions for nonprofits that are using Salesforce.
What impact will GRMS have for nonprofits?
It’s often difficult for small nonprofits to afford the technology they need and the licensing for 3rd party applications to add into Salesforce. Combine that with the need for many of these same nonprofits to do remote work for anything from health care checks to refugee intakes to natural disaster response intakes in areas where they may not have internet access, and you have the gap that GRMS seeks to fill. GRMS combines Salesforce, Heroku, and a mobile app to create a customizable, free application for these situations that any nonprofit with Salesforce can use, both online and offline.
GRMS provides the data model, authentication and middleware setup, and a mobile app (both Android & iOS) for nonprofits to enable them to do critical fieldwork. A GRMS Sample Survey package with Home Care and Disaster Relief surveys already configured is also available to help admins get started with GRMS. After you have installed and configured GRMS in your Salesforce instance, field workers can head out to collect data using the mobile app and then upload it once they have an internet connection or when they are back at the office. As those records flow into Salesforce, admins can leverage low-code tools like Flow to create new client records, update existing ones, and create or update related records. GRMS also lets a field worker have a client list ready to go on the mobile app so they can easily select an existing client for a survey. The GRMS team believes that having access to mobile technology is crucial for successful missions, allowing field teams to serve rural communities more effectively.
How do I access the Grassroots Mobile Survey App?
The GRMS app will soon be available on the Salesforce AppExchange. Check back on the GRMS App page here for updates or join the group discussion in the Trailblazer Community.
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