Occasionally, users have trouble with their app such as frozen screens and unresponsive buttons. This guide is written to provide a flowchart of actions to take in the field to keep your enumerators working without interruptions.
Notes for optimal use of this troubleshooting guide:
Many problems come from Android settings. Each Android brand ships with a different set of options and conditions, which need adjustment to properly use Surveyor. This page assumes you have already properly setup the Android smartphone or tablet using this guide.
Teach these steps as a checklist. When training enumerators, be sure to practice these troubleshooting steps in detail, as they cover the most common problems with apps and phones. This involves teaching core Android and iOS fluencies such as swiping sideways, short and long clicks, and, more specifically, clicking to find all open apps and forcing their closure with a swipe; restarting a phone; and finding Android settings. Slides for the core Android and app fluencies can be found in the training materials here.
The following help steps are for general issues with the app. If you are specifically having trouble with syncing data or photos, go to the troubleshooting data sync page instead. If you are having trouble with GPS, go to this resource guide instead.
A checklist to train your users to follow for troubleshooting:
(check between each step to see if the app issue is resolved)
Report a problem (then check your email to hear back from us)
Restart the app
Check for updates in app settings
Restart the smartphone or tablet
Investigate other apps, if they are also affected, check for Android OS updates
The most important step is to report the problem in the app Settings tab. Follow the instructions provided: what were you doing just before the problem, what did you expect to happen, and what happened instead. We teach users to imagine the cause of the problem is a burnt out lightbulb, but our tech team on the other side of the planet needs to retrace your steps to find that cause. You might write: I walked into the room and flipped the switch for the light. I expected the bulb to come on. Instead, the room stayed dark. This helps our team retrace your steps and find the tech problem.
Screenshot of the Report a Problem interface in the Surveyor app
Problem reports send metadata that is useful about the phone, your app version, and other details that help us trace the issue. We will respond to your problem by email. So, after you submit the report, check the email account associated with your username.
If your app is not able to sync, it may not be able to send a problem report. If your data sync on the home page remains black instead of green, the problem report has not reached our team. In this case, please email us at info@mwater.co. Follow the same instructions from the problem report. Including screenshots of survey names or sites you are having trouble with is helpful.
Restart the app
Closing the app is not enough in this step. Swipe to force quit in the Android home screen. You may notice quite a few apps running in the background. This can cause short term memory problems for your phone, so swipe to force quit all open apps, including mWater.
Check for updates
Every time you are asked to accept a new update from mWater, click yes. This ensures that any bug that is fixed as one user encounters it is also fixed in your app version.
Sometimes, especially when working in bad internet, you need to find good quality wifi or cell coverage and manually request the most recent version of the app. Go to the settings page of the app (the gear in the bottom right of the thumb-level buttons) and click on "Check for updates" and wait for the blue line to completely load.
Screenshot of the Check for updates interface in Surveyor settings
If you are using the webapp in the Chrome browser, refreshing your browser page a few times also updates the app.
If you are using the iOS native app, go to the iOS store and update from there.
Restart the device
Completely power down the phone or tablet. If you have already tried this step, while the device is powered down, remove the battery if possible. Leave the battery out for 30 seconds. Replace the battery and start the device.
Investigate other apps
Try to find out if other apps are also having trouble. Investigate apps that have similar functions to the one you are experiencing trouble with in mWater. For example, if the trouble you have is with GPS, go to Google Maps and see if GPS works there. If the problem is syncing, open Facebook and try to refresh your wall. If the other apps are having trouble, too, the problem is with the Android or iPhone operating system rather than the app and has to be fixed at this level. Go to the Android settings and check for updates there.
Update the app manually from the store
For Android smartphones and tablets, go to the Google Play Store. Open the slide-out menu on the top left. Go to My apps to check on whether your apps are up to date. If an update is available for Surveyor, update it now. Be sure you are on wifi for this step, as it will take up a lot of your mobile minutes. Turn on Auto-update apps in the Settings menu of the Play Store to automatically keep apps up to date.
(note: this screenshot depicts the Android interface, not the iPhone interface for updating the app)
Screenshot of the app update interface in the Google Play Store
For native iOS apps, go to the iPhone App Store, click Updates in the bottom right corner, scroll for Surveyor, and update the app.
Webapps do not require updating. Refreshing the browser does this.
Final Extreme step: reinstall the mWater Surveyor (warning: loses data! Contact mWater first!)
In the rare case that none of the above steps have worked, you may need to uninstall and reinstall the app from the App store. You should not do this before Reporting a Problem (step 1 above) and hearing back from us. If you were not able to report a problem, email info@mwater.co. In this case, we will walk you through the steps to try to recover as much data as possible because uninstalling the app loses any yet-to-sync data.
Problems prevention: Make the most of free training opportunities
We highly recommend leaving the smartphones or tablets with the enumerators around the clock for the weeks or months of the enumeration. An mWater desk review of organizations who alternately checked in devices at the end of each day or left devices in the users' control around the clock found significantly fewer drops, breaks, and thefts in devices that were left with enumerators. Apps like Facebook Lite (the most used app in the world) and WhatsApp use very little bandwidth and playing with these apps in their downtime becomes the best training for troubleshooting an issue that pops up with an app. All apps sometimes freeze or have bugs, but users are much more likely to find a work-around in play than work. That lesson will carry over to increase the quality of your data captured in your enumeration.
Protip! If you are making your own user guides in dashboards, duplicate this dashboard (top right corner option) and then it will be yours to edit and add to for your own enumerators' use.
