In rare cases, there may be a possibility that your field team member loses their mobile device or puts the 

SIM card in another device. In this article, we will discuss the data recovery options.


Data collectors use their mobile devices to submit responses on Collect app. Responses can fall under three categories:


  1. Online Responses: These are responses which have been submitted by the data collector and synced to your administrators Collect account.
  2. Offline Responses: These are responses which have been submitted by the data collector but not synced due to lack of internet. These responses are not visible on your Collect account yet.
  3. Drafts: These are responses which are fully or partially filled and saved. They have not been submitted by the data collectors.


Lost/Damaged Phone: If a member of your field team loses their mobile device, online responses remain visible on your Collect web portal. However, the offline and draft responses are lost since local copies of responses are stored on the mobile device till the time they're submitted and synced.


Changed Phone: If a member of your field team loses their mobile device, online responses remain visible on your Collect web portal. For offline and draft responses, they can log back in on the old phone through which they had earlier filled responses and submit and sync the old responses. This would not work in cases when the phone's memory has been cleared as the responses would then be deleted from the phone without being synced.