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Category: Android

The App is crashing, what can I do?

App crashes are annoying and we work really hard to do what we can to avoid them happening in FormsFly.  But every app crashes sometimes so it’s important to understand a little but about why and what to do if it happens to you.  Most of this advice applies as much to other apps on your device as it does to FormsFly.  Continue reading

Generating an Android Bug Report

This article is to help you generate the Android bug report to help us further investigate the issue that you have reported.

Please generate the bug report immediately after encountering the issue and note the date/time when the problem occurred, as this will assist us in accurately identifying the relevant event in the generated log.

Enable Device Developer Mode

On the device in question:

  1. Go to “Settings”, then tap “About device” or “About phone”.
  2. Scroll down, then tap “Build number” seven times.
    Depending on your device and operating system, you may need to tap “Software Information”, and then tap “Build Number” seven times.
  3. Enter your pattern, PIN or password to enable the “Developer Options” menu.
  4. The “Developer Options” menu will now appear in your Settings menu.
    Depending on your device, it may appear under Settings > General > Developer options.

 

Generate Bug Report

The report needs to be generated. After developer mode has been enabled, you can stay in developer options as this is where the function is to generate the bug report.

As seen in the screenshot (left) below, the second option is Bug Report. Click that option to generate the bug report. A popup will be shown, similar to the screenshot (right) below.

Make sure to select Full Report and then click the report button. This might take a few minutes and may differ from device to device, so please be patient while the report is generated.

A notification will be displayed on the device as soon as the report has been successfully generated.

Share Report

Now that the report has been generated, it is time to share it with us. To do that, click on the notification. This will show the default share options. There are different options, we suggest uploading it to Google Drive in a folder that can be shared with us. We suggest this because the size of the report can differ each time, and emails have a size limit for attachments. If the file is too big, there will be no attachment, and we will not be able to access that report again as it is saved in the root folder of the device that you do not have access to.

After the Report has been uploaded to Google Drive, please share that folder with us so our developers can have a look at the report. 

That is it. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

FormsFly app best practices

When a form entry is completed, the answer values are prioritised and uploaded first.

The size of the answers are also generally quite small and thus upload fast, even on slow network connections.

However media files such as photos, audio and video are each much larger in size and thus take longer to upload. 

Video files are generally the largest files (and thus take the longest to upload), with audio and photos usually being smaller but still significant in size – e.g. in the region of 500 kilobytes.

Mobile devices also do not allow apps to run for long in the background before either killing or sleeping the apps.

This is because power conservation is a key aspect of a mobile operating system – the less apps running, the less battery life consumed.

So generally when the app is in the background or closed, your media file uploads may not have sufficient time to complete before the app is stopped.

In this case, the files will remain on the device waiting for the next time the app is opened before these can continue uploading.

Additionally if the app is forcibly closed by the user – e.g. by swiping the app off of the “open apps” view in iOS or Android – then the mobile operating system will kill the app, which in turn stops any background uploads the app was running.

 

What app users can do to ensure uploads are completed

When finished using the app, your users should not kill it – rather they should simply push the app to the background.

This is easily done by either switching to another app or by hitting the home button on the device.

Users should not swipe the app off the “open apps” view of their device, rather just they should leave it in the apps list even when not in use.

If uploads are slow or not successfully uploaded, mobile users can help by keeping the app open and “awake” in the foreground, or by re-opening the app when they are next on a faster network connection (e.g. an office Wi-fi connection).
This should assist the app with having more time to upload outstanding files.

Troubleshooting the app

Sometimes a form, job history or another item will seem like it’s stuck. This can be for many reasons.

  • No data connection
  • Incorrectly logged in
  • Logged in as someone else
  • Wrong information
  • User hasn’t synced with the platform

 

The last one is the major reason for the majority of failed uploads, this in itself has many reasons, the majority of which can be fixed by the following steps.

 

An indication of this is checking the user’s phone activity on the platform. Many times if a user cannot sync, the activity says the user has not synced for a number of days.

ss-2016-11-15-at-11-15-53

 

NOTE: If there are pending uploads or data still on forms waiting to sync, then under no circumstance is the FormsFly app to be uninstalled.

If the FormsFly app is uninstalled and reinstalled then all data will be lost. There is nothing we can do to recover this after a reinstall.

 

  1. Either make sure the phone power is sufficient or plug into a power source.
  2. Confirm that the phone is connected to a good reliable data connection, either mobile data or Wi-Fi.
  3. Check phone OS. Update if available
  4. Check FormsFly App. Update if available.
  5. Confirm email/login credentials for App.
  6. Reboot phone.
  7. Open the FormsFly app
  8. Check data connection
  9. Login to app
  10. Go to settings
  11. Sync app

Syncing the App

How to Synchronise the FormsFly app

This would be necessary after any new Form version and new or modified Template document.

Tasks

If using a Form from a sent Task, any existing forms sent previously to a new form version or Template, would not reflect the changes.
In this case, the old Task would need to be cancelled and a new Task sent to the device. Whether this Task was sent from the Platform or via the API system like a Widget.

Syncing

After a new version or template has been published or uploaded and any new task has been sent, the sync needs to be done on the device.
cog

Click the cog in the top right of the app screen.

appScreen

Then click on “Check For Updates” part way down the page.
formsfly setting screen

You will then see the Updates Progress.

syncing

If the update lasts only a second, it is possible the device isn’t connected to a data network like 3g or WiFi at that moment so click the Update button again until the Progress popup lasts for a few seconds. There should be a notification icon appear to indicate the device is syncing.