This manual is for the person holding the phone or tablet: how to get set up, do interviews (including days away from connectivity), and make sure every interview reaches the server. The apps for iOS and Android are currently in beta; your supervisor provides access. Keep this page's habits and you will not lose data.
Getting set up
You receive an email invitation from your organisation, set a password, and sign in inside the app. (QR-code device enrolment, where scanning a printed code sets the device up with no typed credentials, is planned for an upcoming app release; your supervisor will tell you when your organisation switches to it.)
Before going to the field, open the app while you still have connectivity so your assigned surveys download to the device. Check the My Assignments tab shows your work.
Your assignments
The My Assignments tab lists what you have been asked to collect: each entry shows the survey and your target. Tap an assignment to start interviewing against it. If an assignment is missing, sync first; if it is still missing, your supervisor may not have assigned it yet.
Interviewing
Answer questions as presented; the app handles skip logic automatically, so questions appear and disappear based on earlier answers. Repeating sections (household members, plots) let you add an entry per person or item.
Your progress saves itself. Every answer autosaves to an encrypted draft on the device. If a call interrupts you, the app is closed, or the battery dies, reopen the survey and you continue where you stopped. Open drafts are listed in the Drafts section.
Photos, GPS, signatures, barcodes capture offline like everything else and upload with the interview.
When you finish an interview it joins the sync queue. You can immediately begin the next one.
Working offline
Everything above works with no signal: surveys are on the device, answers save to the device, and captured interviews queue on the device, all encrypted.
Watch for these, and what they mean:
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| Storage warning banner | The device is below 500 MB free. Free up space soon. |
| Photo capture blocked | Below 200 MB free the app refuses new media so your data stays safe. Text answers still work. |
| "Offline storage is full" | The device holds its maximum of 1,000 unsynced interviews. Sync before continuing. |
| A red failed chip on a queued interview | Automatic upload retries ran out. The interview is safe on the device; sync manually when you have signal. |
Syncing
Sync happens automatically in the background whenever the device has connectivity. To be certain, open the Offline screen and trigger a manual sync when you are back in coverage; the queue should drain to zero. Each interview shows its state (queued, syncing, failed) so you can see exactly what remains.
Two guarantees worth knowing:
- Retries never create duplicates. If an upload is interrupted halfway, the server recognises the interview on the retry. Sync twice, ten times, it does not matter.
- Being signed out never deletes your work. If the app asks you to sign in again (sessions expire, especially after long offline stretches), your queued interviews are untouched. Sign in and they sync. The only thing that erases data is the explicit "sign out and erase" action, which warns you with the count of unsynced interviews first.
Habits that protect your data
- Sync at every opportunity: any patch of signal is a chance to drain the queue.
- Start the day with free storage: clear personal photos and apps before a field rotation.
- Never use "sign out and erase" in the field. If prompted about unsynced interviews, stop and reach your supervisor.
- Check the Offline screen before handing a device back at the end of a rotation; it should show zero pending.
- If a device is damaged with unsynced interviews on it, do not attempt repairs yourself: hand it to your supervisor as-is.
If something looks wrong
The Troubleshooting page covers the common cases. When in doubt: do not erase anything, note what the screen says, and contact your supervisor. Data on the device is recoverable in almost every situation except deliberate erasure.