Restoring user data on phones

Users
1

Hello all,

I am working on a CommCare project which involves about 10 community health
workers and 5 phones. The phones are not assigned exclusively to any
particular CHW and so on any given day any phone can go out with any CHW.
At the end of the day, we would like to synchronize all the phones so that
all phones have the same patients. We thought we had a strategy for this
but we are running into an issue and we are wondering if we are missing
anything. Here is our current strategy:

The first time the phone is used:

  1. Start CommCare
  2. Choose: Restore for Server
  3. Enter a common/shared username and password
  4. Patients are successfully restored to phone

Subsequent times the phone is used:

  1. Start CommCare
  2. Login as common/shared username and password
  3. Go to "Options" menu (in lower, left-hand corner of screen)
  4. Choose: "Restore User Data"
  5. Enter the common/shared username and password
  6. Click the "Fetch Data" button
  7. And here's the problem, we receive the error message: Cannot restore a
    user that is already on the phone!

Our hope was that this strategy would refresh data from the common/shared
username across all phones. Our current work around would be to manually
clear the data off the phones before each use and act like this is the first
time the phone is being used.

Is there a better way? Are we missing something obvious?

Thanks,
Stephen

2

*Our hope was that this strategy would refresh data from the common/shared
username across all phones. Our current work around would be to manually
clear the data off the phones before each use and act like this is the first
time the phone is being used. *

··· * * *Is there a better way? Are we missing something obvious?*

Dear Stephen,

Manually clearing the data sounds like the solution you'll need to go with.
While the functionality you describe is something we've supported in other
projects, it's not something that ships with this version of commcare mobile
and HQ. Ensuring that updates on the phone and mobile to the same cases get
synchronized correctly across multiple mobile devices actually requires some
custom logic for conflict detection and resolution.

Cheers,

Rowena

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 6:39 AM, Stephen Lorenz stephen.lorenz@gmail.comwrote:

Hello all,

I am working on a CommCare project which involves about 10 community health
workers and 5 phones. The phones are not assigned exclusively to any
particular CHW and so on any given day any phone can go out with any CHW.
At the end of the day, we would like to synchronize all the phones so that
all phones have the same patients. We thought we had a strategy for this
but we are running into an issue and we are wondering if we are missing
anything. Here is our current strategy:

The first time the phone is used:

  1. Start CommCare
  2. Choose: Restore for Server
  3. Enter a common/shared username and password
  4. Patients are successfully restored to phone

Subsequent times the phone is used:

  1. Start CommCare
  2. Login as common/shared username and password
  3. Go to "Options" menu (in lower, left-hand corner of screen)
  4. Choose: "Restore User Data"
  5. Enter the common/shared username and password
  6. Click the "Fetch Data" button
  7. And here's the problem, we receive the error message: Cannot restore
    a user that is already on the phone!

Our hope was that this strategy would refresh data from the common/shared
username across all phones. Our current work around would be to manually
clear the data off the phones before each use and act like this is the first
time the phone is being used.

Is there a better way? Are we missing something obvious?

Thanks,
Stephen

3

Hi Rowena,

Thanks for the feedback. We will go with the current method of clear the
phone.

Best,
Stephen

··· On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 2:11 PM, Rowena Luk wrote:

*Our hope was that this strategy would refresh data from the common/shared
username across all phones. Our current work around would be to manually
clear the data off the phones before each use and act like this is the first
time the phone is being used. *
*
*
Is there a better way? Are we missing something obvious?

Dear Stephen,

Manually clearing the data sounds like the solution you'll need to go with.
While the functionality you describe is something we've supported in other
projects, it's not something that ships with this version of commcare mobile
and HQ. Ensuring that updates on the phone and mobile to the same cases get
synchronized correctly across multiple mobile devices actually requires some
custom logic for conflict detection and resolution.

Cheers,

Rowena

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 6:39 AM, Stephen Lorenz stephen.lorenz@gmail.comwrote:

Hello all,

I am working on a CommCare project which involves about 10 community
health workers and 5 phones. The phones are not assigned exclusively to any
particular CHW and so on any given day any phone can go out with any CHW.
At the end of the day, we would like to synchronize all the phones so that
all phones have the same patients. We thought we had a strategy for this
but we are running into an issue and we are wondering if we are missing
anything. Here is our current strategy:

The first time the phone is used:

  1. Start CommCare
  2. Choose: Restore for Server
  3. Enter a common/shared username and password
  4. Patients are successfully restored to phone

Subsequent times the phone is used:

  1. Start CommCare
  2. Login as common/shared username and password
  3. Go to "Options" menu (in lower, left-hand corner of screen)
  4. Choose: "Restore User Data"
  5. Enter the common/shared username and password
  6. Click the "Fetch Data" button
  7. And here's the problem, we receive the error message: Cannot
    restore a user that is already on the phone!

Our hope was that this strategy would refresh data from the common/shared
username across all phones. Our current work around would be to manually
clear the data off the phones before each use and act like this is the first
time the phone is being used.

Is there a better way? Are we missing something obvious?

Thanks,
Stephen

4

Stephen,

Syncing is a supported use case for CommCare 1.1 (although it is not a
stable release, so I cannot guarantee that there will not be problems).

If you want to try to use sync in your project in the profile file, set the

server-tether

property to

sync

Let me know if this works as expected or not.

-Clayton

··· On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 7:05 AM, Stephen Lorenz wrote:

Hi Rowena,

Thanks for the feedback. We will go with the current method of clear the
phone.

Best,
Stephen

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 2:11 PM, Rowena Luk rluk@dimagi.com wrote:

*Our hope was that this strategy would refresh data from the
common/shared username across all phones. Our current work around would be
to manually clear the data off the phones before each use and act like this
is the first time the phone is being used. *
*
*
Is there a better way? Are we missing something obvious?

Dear Stephen,

Manually clearing the data sounds like the solution you'll need to go
with. While the functionality you describe is something we've supported in
other projects, it's not something that ships with this version of commcare
mobile and HQ. Ensuring that updates on the phone and mobile to the same
cases get synchronized correctly across multiple mobile devices actually
requires some custom logic for conflict detection and resolution.

Cheers,

Rowena

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 6:39 AM, Stephen Lorenz stephen.lorenz@gmail.comwrote:

Hello all,

I am working on a CommCare project which involves about 10 community
health workers and 5 phones. The phones are not assigned exclusively to any
particular CHW and so on any given day any phone can go out with any CHW.
At the end of the day, we would like to synchronize all the phones so that
all phones have the same patients. We thought we had a strategy for this
but we are running into an issue and we are wondering if we are missing
anything. Here is our current strategy:

The first time the phone is used:

  1. Start CommCare
  2. Choose: Restore for Server
  3. Enter a common/shared username and password
  4. Patients are successfully restored to phone

Subsequent times the phone is used:

  1. Start CommCare
  2. Login as common/shared username and password
  3. Go to "Options" menu (in lower, left-hand corner of screen)
  4. Choose: "Restore User Data"
  5. Enter the common/shared username and password
  6. Click the "Fetch Data" button
  7. And here's the problem, we receive the error message: Cannot
    restore a user that is already on the phone!

Our hope was that this strategy would refresh data from the common/shared
username across all phones. Our current work around would be to manually
clear the data off the phones before each use and act like this is the first
time the phone is being used.

Is there a better way? Are we missing something obvious?

Thanks,
Stephen