Welcome cmleaver.
We've tried using a hot spot - it allows us to each synch with the cloud database, but not intercommunicate, say to share a printer.
We've tried using a router where one machine was wired to it so we could share a single connection to a hot spot - no dice, not able to be shared.
You will need explore hardware that is specifically designed to share a single hotspot as well as print server of some sort. If you do your team's IT you should be able to set up the needed hardware. Here is a post that gives some ideas:
http://www.radishworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=14.msg32#msg32http://www.radishworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=132.msg482#msg482Admin - I apologize in advance if this comes across as harsh. The truth is that your suggestion to "just get cell service" ...
As you are new, you may not have had time to browse this message forum, "just get cell service" is not the only suggestions. Here are some other posts you might want to look into:
http://www.radishworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=129.msg818;topicseen#msg818http://www.radishworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=498.msg2138;topicseen#msg2138http://www.radishworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=4.msg5#msg5... is completely discounting the reality of the product's usage.
I would also beg to differ with your assessment of how MM is used. While the name "Mission" Manager implies that "missions" are what MM is mostly used for. As a First Responder, you know that 98% of what happens is not related to extreme "emergencies/disasters". The team related functionality of MM gets far more use than the "mission" part. When it comes to "missions" the vast majority are NOT ones that bring down the cellular networks. This is not to say that MM isn't used for those extreme "emergencies/disasters", it is - there are very few major events in the US that MM isn't usually involved in some way.
I am saying that it needs to be seriously investigated and remedied in order for MM to live up to its real potential.
This has been investigated very seriously. MM is a big, very complex application. The current "offline" code is a totally different code stream that duplicates what happens online. Adding a 3rd version of code that duplicates offline custom server, is no small project.
Mission Manager is provided as a public service to all the teams that use it, as has been said many times donations do not even cover server costs much less development expenses. Given this, we need to pick feature development that gives the most bang for the (lack of) buck. This is not to say there will never be more support for a local network, but its not the highest priority right now. We are not ignoring that some teams want a local network, the reality of a free service is we can't support every request.
What is the likelihood of their being reliable cell service during said event? Very low to zero - they are instantly overloaded or down during any sort of emergency. That's just fact.
Again, I would disagree that during "any sort of emergency" cell service goes down. You would be surprised how quickly cell networks were operating in the extreme event of the Haiti Earthquake. There has been many emergency's where MM was used and the cell networks worked just fine. There is always that satellite internet option, if all satellite connections fail, we all have a much bigger problem on our hands.
We welcome your team to use MM, and we hope that you find it a useful tool for most of what your team does. Remember, even if you have your own independent network, it could fail too with something as simple as getting stuck in traffic on the way to the "emergencies/disasters".