offline install of my own commcare app: can't access the sd-ram card, only google drive

[Eric Stephan]

Hi all -- 

Since the wifi here is not reliable, I am trying to do a fully offline install of (1) the overall CommCare app, (2) the barcode scanner app (for future use), and (3) my own commcare app that will run within CommCare.

-- No problem with the first two of those installs, thanks to the help from william pride.

-- however, for installing my own commcare app into CommCare, I have a problem.   I have put my own commcare app's commcare.ccz file onto the same micro-SD card that I've put into a phone.  Then I go into CommCare, and choose "offline install" from the three-dot menu. It gives me a basic file identification field with a folder button to the right, and says "Install your CommCare application from a .zip file."   All good. But when I press the "folder icon" button to try to navigate to identify that commcare.ccz file, CommCare opens a window titled "My Drive," which I believe is for Google Drive.  I can't use that method because right now I will not be able to get the many phones I'm installing onto wifi.  But this window offers no way to use a method other than "My Drive."  

So: 

(1) How do I tell this file locator window to also offer methods to reach either into the phone's own file system or, preferably, reach into the sd-RAM card I have plugged inm

(2) if the option is that it can't reach the SDram and has to actually reach only to the phone's own memory (and once I've learned how to get it to reach the phone's memory as mentioned in the item above), what folder in the phone's own memory should I copy the .ccz file into so that CommCare will find it easiest from the open window?

Thanks for your help!!!!

Eric

[William Pride]

Eric,

This is likely happening because your Android OS has Google Drive registered as the default application to handle the "Choose File" action that CommCare initiates here. For your user case, you'll need to clear this default. You usually do this by going to Settings -> Applications -> Select Relevant Application (in your case Google Drive) -> Clear Defaults. Then, the next time you click the folder button in CommCare, you should be prompted to select a file chooser and can choose a new one.

In many devices you can also navigate to the file on your SD with a file chooser, tap the .ccz file, and CommCare will automatically recognize this file and initiate the offline install process. Unfortunately, this method isn't 100% reliable due to some standard inconsistencies across API versions and file chooser apps.

Best,

Will

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[Eric Stephan]

(I realized it might be relevant -- you might wonder what file manager app that I am using. Well, again, since I'm doing a fresh install on all these phones and hope to do it totally offline and not have to access wifi, I am not downloading ES File Manager or something.  but the phones have a file manager on it called "File Manager," whose icon is a tall yellow envelope.  That has worked fine for the installing of my two APK files, but of course my challange now is the commcare CCZ file. -- Eric)

[Eric Stephan]

Great info, and along the lines of what I'd been trying, but seems not to quite work out for me -- 

-- these phones are straight out of the box, and when I go to settings - applications, Google Drive is not one of the applications listed.   And I've not seen google drive listed anywhere on the app. 

-- Also to note, when I go to phones that are TRULY out of the box and I have never configured things on them when connected to wifi.... when I go to CommCare and click the "folder" button to get it to access something -- it actually doesn't give me a "My Drive" window because I've never even told it any google credentials. So it puts a black message at bottom saying "You must have at least 1 google account set up before you can use this application."   So this is an out of the box phone (Alcatel Pop C1, also called, in the "about phone" area, the "ONE TOUCH 4015X", running I believe the newest Jelly Bean) ... and the only things installed on it are CommCare and Barcode Scanner, both via SDram card.

-- in my scan down the applications in the Settings-Applications list, I dont' see any other "cloud storage" or file-storage type apps... 

-- So, it seems like out of the box it hard-defaults to Google Drive, even though google drive isn't installed yet (must be natively installed.)  Can you think of another settings or config location that might stand in for adjusting that hard default? or any other thoughts?   Jeez, what a hardcore approach to force the google defailt.

-- Not that it's relevant, but when I open up the settings -apps-- commcare entry, it has no defaults set at all, and it actually does say that it has data stored, but both when I try my issue when it has that initial data present, as well as after I've chosen Clear Data, the problem remains...

Thanks for your thoughts!!

Eric

[Patrick Keating]

Hi Eric,

I would highly recommend you use ES file explorer for carrying out offline install (standard practice for many at Dimagi).

You could also create an apk version of ES file explorer to save you time. 

Finally, you could save the CCZ folder to the Download folder in the phone's memory, or you could directly create a new folder in the memory of the phone with the name of your project (whatever works best for  you)

Thanks,

Patrick

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Dimagi, Inc

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[William Pride]

Eric,

Hmm, that does sound like a frustrating default behavior, though Google certainly has a track record of doing this (and the EU anti trust lawsuits to show for it).

Looks like the Android application is actually called "Drive". In the applications tab, if you swipe to the "All" category, you should see the "Drive" app there. You could try removing the defaults there, or even disabling the application temporarily (since, of course, they won't let you uninstall this app).

I'll definitely second Patrick's recommendation that you get the ES File Explorer application as well so that once you do the steps above you can use this in Drive's place.

Best,

Will 

[Clayton Sims]

Eric,

As a heads up, we're working to improve this function in the future to work more reliably with Android's new defaults so you won't need to use an external file browser.

When we release that fix it'll be noted in the app release notes for the upcoming version.

Sorry about the trouble!

-Clayton