Mission Manager v3.0 - Now without a Web Connection!

[Radishworks]

The number one requested feature of Mission Manager has been a version that works offline.  Today I'm very happy to announce this wish has been granted!  With the advent of HTML5, Mission Manager Offline runs in your Web Browser just like it does when you are connected to the Web - even with offline maps.  Sound too good to be true?  Read on...

HTML5 has some amazing features, it is supported by most all Web Browsers (except most Internet Explorer versions - Microsoft is pretty behind the times these days).  HTML5 allows Web pages and Web data to be "cached" to your local computer.  If a Web site takes advantage of these abilities, things like Mission Manager can be used offline when no Web connection is available.  When running offline Mission Manager acts just like any other application on your computer.  Missions can be edited offline or on the Web, or even both - after editing, missions can be synced together so both the offline and online data is matched.  Geographic areas on maps can be selected and the images (tiles) of these areas will be cached to your local computer.

For the next few weeks this feature will be beta and only enabled in the SANDBOX area with the login below.  After the beta period, this feature will be enabled in your accounts.  Here is the special SANDBOX login:

User: cmd (that at thing) radishworks.com
Password: password

Here are a few tips:

• Currently this offline feature only works with Google Chrome and Firefox browsers.
• Select a Web Mission and press the "Download" button or use the "Create Offline Mission" button to create a new offline one.
• Once you have an offline mission, disconnect your computer from the Web and go to www.radishworks.com/SearchManager/Login.php.  Mission Manager will know you're offline and take care of the rest. (Create a bookmark, if you don't have one already.)
• For each offline Mission, you can select what area of the maps will be cached to your local computer.  (Only limited sized areas may be selected)
• Changes made to Web Missions or offline missions can be synced with the Cache Maps / Sync Missions button.
• Chrome users will be prompted to install a small Extension, this extension simply allows Mission Manager to cache more than the 5MB limit of files, Firefox users may be prompted to allow offline storage.
• Check In works offline, exactly how it works on the Web, except member information cannot be edited offline.  When offline, guest members can be created in the field (and edited), these guests will be synced to your Web account when you are back on line.
• Refer to the Working Offline section of the Help screen for more information.

There are a few known issues:

• Some offline aerial tiles will download as white, this is a problem with the data source.

Feedback is welcome and enjoy!

Mike

[Radishworks]

A quick update on the off-line version of MM.  All of the "known issues" above have now been fixed, except the occasional white tile on Aerial Maps (this is a data source issue not a MM one). 

Another week or so of testing and this off-line feature will be enabled outside the sandbox for your team's account.

Mike 

[Kelly Circle]

Any chance this is ready...

[Radishworks]

Any chance this is ready...

Have you tried the Sandbox version?

I've been waiting for some feedback the sandbox version before it gets turned on for each team   

With no issues reported, maybe its good to go?

Thanks,
Mike

[Jeff Beckman]

I've been playing with it a bit today and have found some issues.  The biggest right now has to do with the map download process.  While downloading maps, I frequently get hiccups where there is no network traffic.  If I don't touch anything, it seems to work through it, but if I'm multi-tasking with another window on radishworks.com (like typing a message in the forums) I get the unpleasant surprise of "this page is not available".

I've had some other minor issues.  Here they are:

• Any chance of a topographic map without messing up download times too much?
• A note about download times or sizes might be helpful in managing people's expectations during the synchronization process.  The one that I checked was about 42MB.
• How does synchronization decide what to keep?  I had two "people" enter the same clue.  One was a good not taker and one was not.  Only the good note taker's clue details were in the web mission after the offline missions were synchronized.

Overall, this is a great addition to Mission Manager.  It should help my team a great deal since many of our field training exercises are way out in the back country.  By the way, we've got a desert training coming up August 12th where we might be able to take this thing for a serious test drive (wink wink).

[Radishworks]

Thanks for the feedback.

I get the unpleasant surprise of "this page is not available".

I've seen this sometimes too.  As much as I prefer Google Chrome it tends to do this if the page takes a bit of time to load.  No doubt the Mission Manager server could be made much faster but this requires a more $.  Hard to justify more $ if MM is free  .

Any chance of a topographic map without messing up download times too much?

Yes and no.  There are licensing issues around downloading tiles.  Creating of the off-line tiles needs to be done on the Mission Manager server, so this would require a larger server with more space, again more $ expense.

A note about download times or sizes might be helpful in managing people's expectations during the synchronization process.  The one that I checked was about 42MB.

Good idea.  Maps tiles are very disk space intensive. 

How does synchronization decide what to keep?

Good question.  It works like this:

A time stamp is saved with every field change, for both on-line and all the off-line missions.  When a mission is "synced" the fields with the latest time stamp are propagated to all places.  It works a lot like the multi-users on-line syncing.  The same people can change the same field, but the last change will be the one displayed. 

It is OK for multiple people to work on the same mission off-line on different computers.  All their changes will be synced when everyone is back on-line.  For things like clues or teams, it is not recommended that more than one person/computer create and edit them off-line.  Clues, Subjects and Teams are numbered, so it would create a sync conflict if one offline computer created clue 1 as a sock and another offline computer created clue 1 as a shoe, the last edit would win.  Same issue with teams and multi subjects.  There is no problem with two offline computer users editing different fields on the same clue (subjects or teams) as long as they are both in agreement that clue 1 is the same item.

I'd recommend a division of work when more than one offline computer is used on a mission.  One for check in, personnel assignments and teams, one for mapping, one for radio log, etc.  Then let the sync merge everything together when everyone is back online.

Mike