QGIS/QField - Joining updated and new features to original shapefile

Question

I am currently working in QGIS 2.18 with Qfield to collect address information.

I currently have a list of addresses (.csv) that were given as part of the project which contains a variety of information, including point XY co-ordinate for each address (although these appear to be wrong and need geocoding.)I have made this into a shapefile for use in QField offline editing.

Samplers will use Qfield and walk around each town, moving the existing address point features to within buildings polygons at the correct addresses and updating the attributes of each point with the required information. They will also be adding new point features for those addresses which are currently not in the existing address list.

Each evening, I download the QField shapefiles from each of the samplers containing the updated existing points and the new points that they have taken in the day.

If it was just a case of updating the old points with the new attribute information, I understand that I can join across a common field and repopulate each field with the new information provided. I have tried this, however with multiple files to add (5 samplers/folders a day) and manually repopulating the old columns with the updated fields is taking an enormous amount of time especially as I need the new XY coordinate for each feature. It also means that my original shapefile is getting confusing as I have so many joined columns.

As they will also be adding new point features, I cannot find a way to add these new points without updating the .csv itself and re-adding it to QGIS as they do not have a common column with the original .csv to be included in the join above.

Can anyone suggest the ideal/most efficient way of using the shapefiles from each sampler to update the attributes for each existing point feature as well as including the newly created ones?

I chose QField as QGIS is the software i'm most comfortable working in. If there is a significantly easier alternative to Qfield for gathering and integrating the new data then yes I am more than happy to try others but they would have to be free.

Answer 1

As topic starter indicated free alternatives are allowed, I recommend to try NextGIS software: NextGIS Mobile + nextgis.com cloud + QGIS (NextGIS Connect plugin).

This software allow you to automatic synchronize your field data and desktop GIS.

The steps to get this functionality are follows:

1. Register at nextgis.com and create your free web GIS (instructions).
2. Install NextGIS Connect plugin in QGIS. Add your web GIS to plugin (instructions).
3. Upload your Shape files to your web GIS.
4. Install NextGIS Mobile on your mobile device and add layers from your web GIS. Check if layer is synced with web GIS (two arrows near the layer icon in layers list or check in web GIS settings)
5. Go to field and add/modify your spatial data. No internet connection required to edit spatial data (the sync will perform when you mobile device get connection to the cloud).
6. Additionally you can create WFS service on you layer in web GIS and open it in QGIS. The edits in QGIS will transfer to NextGIS Mobile and vice versa.

All this software are Open source. In this scenario the free plan is enough to achieve synchronization functionality.

Disclosure: I'm developer at NextGIS.