Allow Collector to Save Photos to Device

[RogerCleaves1]

I would like to recommend the Collector Development Team look into re-working the attachment ability to allow photos to be saved to the device in a folder location.  Sometimes, our field staff have either the Collector app crash or their iPads overheat.  When this happens, the photos taken in Collector are lost and can't be reattached to the feature when the app or device recovers.  Sometimes our staff are no longer at the location and can't re-take a photo as well, so this update would be greatly appreciated!

[RobertBorchert]

Take the photos with your device and than load them into the database when you get back to the office.

Or perhaps your setup needs tweaking. The field crews I developed an collector app for to replace antennas has resulted in over 3500 photos.  The photos they take upload to the database immediately.  IF they happen  to not have 4g service they know it right away and simply take the photos an store them on their phones an upload them when they get in

[RogerCleaves1]

Oh, what I’m discussing is that if you happen to have taken photos in the middle of an edit session and the app crashes, the photos are lost. I’m asking that when a photo is taken inside of the app it is saved into a folder on the device incase of app failure.

[RobertBorchert]

Are you referring to failure of the APP or loss of data?  Of your talking App failure I would then think there is an integral issue with your app or your devices.

We have experienced some issues with iPhones activating VPN on its own and causing issues. But if your app is crashing I don't think taking the photos and saving them to the app is going to fix it.

You should only be taking one or a few photos one at a time and press submit.  I have the feeling from your first post your guys are taking photos at a site and then  leaving. I think it would be a good practice to take a photo and submit it.

By having multiple photos in the app at a time, especially if they are higher resolution, you may be overloading the memory on you iPad and causing the crash.

[RogerCleaves1]

Hi Robert,

So the process is as follows:

• Users are collecting images on a parcel in the field, sometimes they are connected, sometimes offline
• When users go to submit the feature with the attached photo, the app or iPad crashes. Sometimes this is due to excessive heat, mainly because we are collecting data during 105 degree F days.
• When the user reboots their device after it cools off, the photo is lost.  The rest of the data isn't hard to re-enter into the app because they have been taking notes, but the photos are gone and can't be recovered.
• What I'm asking is that on the app side, when you take a photo using Collector, that the photo is saved into a folder on the device as well, so that way, if the upload fails or the app or device crash, the photo is still stored on the device and can be re-added after the fact.

[andrewRaaf]

I second this request. 
It used to work on last year's version of Collector (beta). I would tap to create a new point, take a photo within the Collector app, and the photo would be attached to the point AND also saved in my phone's gallery as a jpeg. It was quite nice to have the full res backup photo on my phone's memory.  The latest update (2021 March) does not appear to have this function. Or am I missing it? Please bring it back.