Frequently Asked Questions

Mobile Data Anywhere is priced per license per month, with a discount for annual billing. A license covers one device, or one user with edit access. A user linked to a device shares that device's license, and read-only users are free. Pricing for each plan can be found on the pricing page.

No you don't need any MDS device licenses to use Mobile Data Anywhere. The device license is included in the monthly per-license subscription amount. Discounts apply, however, for existing licenses.

See the pricing page for more details.

Once you have created an account and activated it, you can sign up for a subscription by going to the Account page and clicking "Manage Subscription". Select how many licenses you need and how often you would like to be billed. A license covers one device, or one user with edit access; a user linked to a device shares that device's license, and read-only users are free.

Discounts apply for 6 monthly and yearly subscriptions, check the pricing page for more details.

To remove licenses from your subscription, go to the Control Panel -> Account page and go to the "Manage Subscription" tab. Then select the "Remove licenses from my subscription" option and select how many licenses to remove from your subscription.

Note: only unallocated licenses can be removed. Delete devices from the device list (or make users read-only) first to free them up.

A license covers one device, or one user with edit access:

• A device uses one license.
• A user who can edit data and is linked to a device shares that device's license, so the pair uses one license.
• A user who can edit data but has no device uses one license of their own.
• Read-only users are free, including Billing Managers (who can view everything and manage users, groups and the subscription).

When you add or edit a user you can make them read-only, give them edit access without a device, link them to an existing device, or create a new device for them. The license allocation table on the Account page shows what each license is used by and how many are free.

You can install Mobile Data Studio onto any Android phone / table running Android OS 2.3 or greater. The APK install file can be downloaded from the Downloads page or by clicking this link on your Android device: Install Mobile Data Anywhere for Android .

The "Mobile Data" application for iPhone and iPad is available through the iTunes app store.

You can find this by going to the App Store on your device and searching for "Mobile Data", or by following this link to the iTunes store on your PC or device: Install Mobile Data Anywhere for iOS

You can add devices in two ways:

1. Go to the Control Panel -> Devices and click "Add Device". Enter the device's name and unit id; or
2. Enter the connection settings into the mobile device and it will automatically register in the device list (if there are unallocated licenses in your subscription).

You can upload a project by going to the Control Panel -> Projects page and click the "Upload" tab.

The uploaded project will then appear in the project list and you can deploy it to any devices in your device list.

Projects are created with the Mobile Data Studio application. If you don't have it installed on your Windows PC, please follow the links from the Downloads page to download the installer.

Once you have created your project with Mobile Data Studio, you can upload the project's ".ppc" file under Control Panel -> Projects -> Upload Project

A number of tutorial exercises on how to create projects and using different kinds of points within your projects can be found at the link below.

The skills tutorials can be found here: Skills Tutorials

You can upload an Ultradrop resource file by going to Accounts->Projects and then selecting the Ultradrop Resources Tab. From here you can upload a file that contains the dynamic data that you Ultradrop point requires.

The dynamic data that is specified in your Ultradrop in the MDS Designer must begin with the project relative path. For example, configure your Ultradrop point to look for data in "%PPC_PATH%\ultradrop\data.txt" and then upload a file "data.txt" to your Ultradrop resources.

There are several ways that your data can be accessed once a device has submitted it:

1. Data that has been uploaded to Mobile Data Anywhere can be downloaded to XML, Excel or HTML files, including attached photos and sketch point images.
2. Projects can also be configured to email individual sessions to xml, html or PDF when they are received.
3. Data can also be accessed via the Web API. Please contact us for more details on the Web API as it is currently in limited release.

Data is stored securely with-in the Amazon Web Services cloud with strong password protection.

Mobile Data Anywhere leverages the Amazon web services stack for highly secure, highly available and redundant operation.

There are multiple ways to do this but some of the more common solutions are:

• On a web server
• Third Party image hosting service (ie Photobucket)
• Base64 encoded raw data

Using a web server:

1. Upload the image to your webserver in a folder that has public access permissions
2. Copy the link to the image
3. In your Html Template file, add a new HTML image tag with the following format:

<img alt="Image" src="">

4. Now paste the link, so that your html is:

<img alt="Image" src="http://yourwebsitedomain.com/image_name.png">

Using Photobucket:

1. Sign up to photobucket: https://secure.photobucket.com/register
2. Click Upload
3. Select a bucket that has public access - the default bucket should be public.
4. Following the instructions provided by Photobucket, upload an image to your library
5. Once its finished uploading, click the Library button at the top left of the webpage
6. Click on the image that you just uploaded
7. On the right side of the webpage, click the box where it says "Direct". This will automatically copy a link to your clipboard
8. In your Html Template file, add a new HTML image tag with the following format:

<img alt="Image" src="">

9. Now paste the link that was copied from Photobucket, so that your html is:

<img alt="Image" src="http://i1164.photobucket.com/albums/q570/yourusername/image_name_zps3rwgpahs.png">

Using Base64 encoded data:

1. Using a third party service to encode an image as Base64 data, such as: http://www.motobit.com/util/base64-decoder-encoder.asp
2. Upload the image and convert it to source data
3. Copy the Base64 representation of the source data
4. In your Html Template create a new tag

<img src="data:image/jpeg;base64,==" />

5. Now paste the Base64 source data after the comma but before the first '=' (BASE64DATA is used here to represent the data copied from the website)

<img src="data:image/jpeg;base64,BASE64DATA==" />

A project can be enabled for mapping by going to the Mapping Settings page in the Project sub-menu. This page lets you select which GPS point in the project will be used for session location. The GPS point must have only decimal latitude and longitude in the format. We recommend using "%lat%,%long%" as the gps point format.

Once this point is selected, the sessions in the project, and any new sessions will be scanned for values in the GPS point, and those values will be used for the session locations on the "View Sessions on Map" page and in KML exports.

Encrypted connections are currently support by Android and iOS devices. Windows mobile is not supported at this time, but will be in a future update of MDS for Windows Mobile.

Yes. The Mobile Data mobile client application can operate without an active network connection. Once a project has been loaded on a device, sessions are stored on the device's internal storage. They can be synchronised back to the server at a later stage when the device has a network connection.

Two-factor authentication asks for a 6-digit code after your password when you sign in to the web portal, so a stolen password is not enough to get into your account. Turn it on from your User Profile page (the "Set up" button next to Two-Factor Authentication) and choose how to get your codes:

• An authenticator app such as Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator or 1Password (recommended).
• An email with a code each time you sign in.

You also get 10 backup codes: keep them somewhere safe, each one signs you in once if you lose your phone. Tick "Trust this browser for 30 days" on the code screen to skip the code on a browser you use often.

Account owners and billing managers can require two-factor authentication for every user of their account, or for single users, on the Users page. Users who have not set it up must do so before they can use the web portal again. From the same page they can reset a user's two-factor authentication if that user loses their phone. API access and the Designer are not affected.