Hi Aaron,
Great questions. I'm cc-ing our users group in case the information is
relevant to anyone else and if others want to chime in with more details.
I'm interested in learning more about the capabilities of using Commcare
for monitoring purpose in the field. I'm wondering if you can help me with
the following 2 question.
- Suppose staff A registered a new child and filled out a form for the
child on her mobile device. Can staff B who is out in the same village see
the new child on his mobile phone? Where does the client record get stored
/ uploaded / replicated to?
Yes, this is possible using case sharing[1]. The records get stored both on
the phone and the server and will be updated each time the phones sync.
- Suppose a staff in the field filled out a form on a child. the form
is uploaded to the server, and a staff updates the form. Does the updated
data get sent back to the field staff phone right away? How does sync work?
No. Once the phones have submitted the server it will be available to all
other phones the next time they sync. There are different ways to configure
sync (and it depends whether you're using j2me or android), but this is
available as a manual option in the menus or will periodically happen in
the background.
cheers,
Cory
[1] https://wiki.commcarehq.org/display/commcarepublic/Case+Sharing