Handling photos and videos made by players

Uploading information over the mobile data is sometimes a challenge. Uploading photos and videos is the work in progress for us, that will gradually improve the reliability and speed of the media arriving to result pages.

This blogpost outlines what happens behind the scenes and what options  the instructor has in case of issues.

Information

We have three categories of uploadable items
1. Information – answers and all the attributes (done/not done, correct/incorrect, specific answer etc.) and the  state of the game (results/score)
2. Photos taken by players on photo locations
3. Videos taken by players on video locations

Loquiz works off- and online. If the mobile data is available, then information and media start uploading after the question is answered. At the same time, information is saved in the smart device local database and if the  internet connection is not available, items are waiting to be uploaded once the connection is present.

Priorities

Loquiz prioritizes information over media on upload. Information about the game state will be uploaded first and media after that. This will sometimes result in the situation where the game results are uploaded correctly, but media seems to be missing. Usually, the work is in process.

Issues

Sometimes there are issues with uploads. We have built some features to help you to troubleshoot the situation.
1. If for any reason media or info does not get uploaded  Loquiz tries to do it next time when a question is answered.
2.The  App also tries to check the status and upload all media at the end of the game.
3. Even if game has ended, when the user opens a menu and presses Sync (Android) or navigates to the results screen (iOS), the upload check is triggered and the upload of remaining items is started.
4. On the PRO side, photos and videos appear as they are uploaded.

There are also error messages on the answer pages (bottom of Photos and Videos pages). These error messages check what photos and videos should be there and what are missing by the team`s name. So, if there is an issue with the upload and if the message appears, the instructor can trigger an additional upload from the device menu. As the last resort team can hand over the smart device and he/she can download the photos to a computer. The error messages  work only if a smart device has still some internet connection, otherwise you would get no results/scores coming in.