Error message when opening the app

Hey!

My problem concerns participant 38126 in study 1413.
She stopped receiving notifications and when she opens the application she gets this error message:

What is the issue here?

Kind regards,
Abdallah

Hi @abdallah.al-janabi

We have found an issue with our latest app, that happens only when a participant updates the old app to the new version. We have fixed the issue and sent an update to the Apple’s App Store, and the update should be available in the next few hours (by the morning of Apr. 21st Amsterdam’s local time). The new version number is 441.

In the meantime, the only solution to this is to uninstall and reinstall the app.

Sorry for the problem.
Mohammad

Hi @m.hashemian,

From your response, it seems like:

  • this affects iOS users only. So Android users don’t experience this issue?
  • this happens only when updating the old app to the new version (version 440?). Does that mean that this issue does not occur when participants installed this version for the first time? We had ~40 new some participants start between Monday and Tuesday and they likely all installed this version, so it’s important for us to know if they should all update the version they installed.

If it does also affect users who installed this version for the first time, is there a way to reach out to the iOS users directly through the Ethica app and ask to update the app?

Best,
Tim

Hi @t.vantimmeren

The problem happened on both platform.

It only impacted those who had the old app installed (version 430) and then upgraded to the new app (version 440). New app (version 440) was released on Tuesday at 7 am ET.

We fixed and updated the app immediately after the first error report. It was updated on Android at 10 am ET (version 441), but for iOS the review took a bit time and the update (version 441) was live at 11 pm ET.

For study 1314, the following participants were impacted:

  • 37934
  • 38125

Hope this provides enough clarification.

Thanks,
Mohammad

Dear Mohammad @m.hashemian ,

Thank you for your response.
I work with Tim on study 1413 (you wrote 1314 I assume that was a typo?):
It seems that it impacted more than two participants, as we received e-mails by more people.
We sent out an e-mail to everyone to update it and it resolved the issue for some people already.
However, I see a list of people that have NA’s for today and it is hard to judge whether this is due to the error or just because the session data didn’t update yet:

  • 38222

  • 38232

  • 38258

  • 38279

  • 38327

  • 38591

  • 38598

  • 38626

  • 38629

  • 38668

  • 38125

  • 38124

  • 37940

  • 37718

Is there a way for you to check again, since it seems to affect more than the two participants you mentioned?

Kind regards,
Abdallah

Hi @abdallah.al-janabi

You are right. Sorry it was a typo. I meant 1413.

The two people I mentioned above were Android users. A few people in your list are iOS users. But you also listed 8 android users, which is 6 people more than what we see in our list. I will ask my colleague to check this in case that’s something we need to look into it futher.

Thanks,
Mohammad

Hi @m.hashemian

Unfortunately, we know that the number of participants who experienced problems due to this issue is a lot higher than the two you mentioned, or even the ones Abdallah mentioned having missing data. We received emails about this issue from the following participants:
37927
38220
38080
38268
38114
38222
38279
38126
38224
38585

We then immediately send out an email to all enrolled iOS users (based on my interpretation of your initial response and our experience that Android users seemed to be largely unaffected) asking them to update the app. This likely controlled the damage somewhat, but it’s likely that even more people have experienced this issue.

Is there a way to found out how many more are impacted and what is the best solution?

Apart from the time this sudden issue took us, it did (and maybe still is) seriously affect data collection of our ongoing study. I really hope we won’t experience this again!

Best,
Tim

Hey @m.hashemian ,

To add to Tim’s point earlier I checked again which participants still have NA’s for yesterday and thus might still experience problems:

38591

38626

38629

38660

38258 (also the day before)

38232

38591 (This one has NA’s since starting a week ago)

38124

37940

37718

Generally, what is the reason that the session data is updated so late in some cases (38591 is missing data for a full week still)? This can’t be due to a missing internet connection and it is a big hindrance in monitoring the progress of our participants. What can we do about this? And did your colleague check the ID’s I sent yesterday? It has some urgency because we might have to exclude a big number of participants if they miss more surveys.

Kind regards,
Abdallah

Dear @m.hashemian,

We still didn’t hear back from you - are you looking into this? We would really appreciate your prompt response to clarify this issue, as it potentially impacts many participants who are in the middle of a 7-week study.

Best,
Tim

Hi @t.vantimmeren

I understand your frustration. I will try to explain it in more detail hopefully it provides more clarification.

We receive a report of any problem in the app, unless the user is offline. In this scenario, the problem happened when the participants updated their old app to the new app. For this update to happen, the participant must have been online. So we are sure we have received a report from any participant who experienced this issue.

Now In our reports, we had two participants in study 1413 who used Android:

    37934
    38125

And 27 who used iOS. Their IDs are:

    37717
    37725
    37769
    37926
    37927
    37928
    37930
    38079
    38080
    38097
    38114
    38126
    38130
    38220
    38221
    38222
    38224
    38246
    38255
    38268
    38279
    38281
    38327
    38585
    38625
    38626
    38629

The number of iOS users are more than Android users, because it took longer for the iOS fix to be live.

As to how this can be fixed, as I mentioned above, this was fixed on the same day. I will reiterate the timeline here:

  1. The app was updated at 7 am Apr. 20 Eastern.
  2. The first issue was reported by 9 am the same day on both platforms.
  3. The Android update was released and live by 10 am ET, the same day.
  4. The iOS update was submitted, reviewed, and was available by 11 pm Apr. 20 Eastern. The longer delay was due to Apple’s review process. And this delay led to more people being impacted.

Hope this helps,
Mohammad