Hey all, HUGE update to Dedoose yesterday!  So substantial, you’ll note we’re moving on to Dedoose 2.0.

Bottom line is that over the last few months we’ve been building our wish list (again) and we’ve been listening carefully to the needs of all the Dedoose users.  Video support and editable documents are our next major directions,  but we feel this update addresses the vast majority of new feature wishes and some terrific performance enhancements.

Lot’s to report here, but hang in and I’ll bet there is something you’ll be glad to read about:

Code merging—if you ever find you’ve used two codes independently and then decide to merge that work, we’ve got you covered.

1. Enter code tree editing
2. Float over and choose to edit the code you want to merge into another
3. Click ‘Merge’
4. Select the ‘Primary Code’ you want to merge the ‘Secondary’ code into
5. Submit

That’s it…and all the code applications you’ve done with either code are now represented in the coding associated with the primary code.

Excerpt Creator and Creation Date Tips—when you float over a bracket in a document, you will see the character position and the codes applied AND the name of the user who created the excerpt and the date it was created.

Document Font Size Control—eyes getting tired?  No worries, you will now find ‘Font Size’ controls in the lower right corner of a document viewing panel.  Arrow UP to enlarge the font, arrow DOWN to shrink, easy.

Descriptor Field Value Ordering—you can now adjust the order that field values are presented in all the Dedoose charts.  Previously, the presentation of the value order was based on frequency.  Now, you can edit the order of Descriptor Field values and this user-controlled order will be retained for all subsequent presentations.  Ex. change the order of ‘Ethnicity’ from African American, Asian, Caucasian, Latino to Latino, African American, Asian, Caucasian and that’s the way they would show up in all your charts.

SuperMegaGrid Filter Enhancement = Complex Filtering —some users, for example, wanted to narrow their excerpt list to only those with all of 3, 4, 5, … codes and maybe other characteristics too.  Great idea…done!  This is a somewhat more advanced analysis feature, but extremely useful when you understand its power.  Filtering and sorting in any of our custom Dedoose SuperMegaGrids, we hope, is pretty straight-forward.  In the Columns section you can select what fields you want to view in the data grid.  In the Filter section you can narrow the records in view based on particular criteria.  For example, here’s how it might work for you in our demo project—everybody has one of these:

1. Enter the ‘Excerpts’ work space by clicking the ‘Excerpts’ icon in the Dedoose main menu bar
2. In the Columns panel on the left side, click ‘Uncheck All’
3. In the same Columns panel, open ‘Fields’ folder and click the check boxes next to ‘Home Language’ and ‘Child Sex’
4. Again in the Columns panel, open the ‘Codes’ Folder and click the check boxes next to In the ‘Reading by PC’ and ‘Reading Frequency’…at this point you will see all these columns AND you’ll see that a folder for each has appeared in the lower-left ‘Filtering’ section
5. In the ‘Filtering’ section, open the ‘Reading by PC’ folder and click the check box next to ‘true’
6. Open the ‘Reading Frequency’ folder and click the ‘true (5/7)’ and ‘true (7/7)’ check boxes
7. Open the ‘Home Language’ folder and click the check boxes next to ‘Bilingual’ and ‘English’
8. Finally, open the ‘Child Sex’ folder and click the check box next to ‘Male’

So, here’s what we’ve just done.  Step by step, we’ve narrowed our list of excerpts to only those that meet the following criteria…based on the filtering steps above, we now have excerpts that:

1. (step 5) Were coded with the ‘Reading by PC’ code
2. (step 6) AND were also coded with the ‘Reading Frequency’ code AND had a rating of 5 (of 7 days/week) OR 7 (of 7 days/week)—but NOT (2 of 7 days/week)
3. (step 7) AND came from families that reported being either ‘Bilingual’ OR ‘English’ speakers at home
4. (step 8) AND had ‘Male’ children as the study target child.

Pretty complex, but allows for the definition of a very fine level filter and now I could simply export the remaining records and go weave my story.

Excerpt Text Dynamically Loads—by loading excerpt text on demand (as opposed to loading it all when first entering a project) we’ve seen tremendous gains in performance.   90% of the data downloaded when first loading a relatively large project was attributable to the excerpt text.  This is now essentially 0% with no noticeable impact of the rest of what you experience in Dedoose.

Drag and Drop Codes in Training Center—now both the ‘double-click’ and ‘drag and drop’ approach works for adding codes to excerpts in the Training Center.

Cross-Tabs Chart (Descriptor field by Descriptor field) Added—our first pure quantitative chart.

Overlapping Excerpt Text to Red—all text in overlapping excerpt will be highlighted in red, rather than the color change from sub-section to sub-section.  The brackets are still the clearest way to isolate and examine specific excerpts, but this change will be easier on the eye.

Memo Folder Memory—a small and important fix that retains the folder information when editing existing memos…previously, if the memo was in a sub-folder, it would revert to the root folder upon submitting an edit so you would have had to re-specify the folder of choice.

AND,  as always, please let us know about your experience, we value user feedback immensely.

Our Best,

The Dedoose Team