Resolving conflicts

Mapit Cloud merges a crew’s work field by field, so two people changing different fields of one feature both keep their work, and that is not a conflict. A conflict is one of these:

• Two people set the same field to different values, for example both changed the condition of one lamp post, or both moved the same point. The first to reach Mapit Cloud stands.
• One person edited a feature another had deleted, or deleted one another had edited. The deletion stands.
• Somebody edited a layer that was later removed from the project, and the edit arrived after the removal.
• An edit broke one of the layer’s own rules, such as a field that must be filled in or a value that must be unique. The project keeps its version, and the rest of that phone’s sync goes through.

In every case nothing is lost: the edit that did not stand is kept with who made it, on which device and when. See Syncing, working offline and conflicts for how a sync merges.

Admins and managers. They see the number of open conflicts on the cloud project’s page and open the conflicts page from there. Everybody else carries on as before: their app syncs normally, and they see whatever is decided at their next sync, like any other edit. See Roles.

Each card is one feature, named by its label or its Name field, with its layer. A sentence says what happened, for example: Anna’s edit was kept (Pixel 8, 14:55). Ben’s was not (iPad, 14:58). Times are in your own time zone. A name, a device or a time Mapit Cloud does not know is left out rather than guessed.

When one sync clashed on several fields of the same feature, they are rows on one card:

• Text, numbers, dates and Yes or No are shown side by side: the value kept, and the one that was not.
• A shape or a location is shown on a small map with both versions in two colours, the kept one solid and the other dashed, with a legend naming whose is whose. A line above the map says what differs, such as how far apart they are, how many points each has, and how their area or length compares. Where the layer’s coordinate system does not say what its unit is, distances are not given.
• An edit against a deletion says who deleted the feature and shows the edited feature’s fields.

• Keep this keeps what stands now and changes nothing on anybody’s phone.
• Use Ben’s version (with the person’s name) puts the other value in place. For an edit against a deletion, it brings the feature back with the edited values.
• Use all of Ben’s appears when a card has several fields, and uses the other version for each of them in turn.

Once every field on a card is resolved, the card leaves the list. Choosing the other version reaches every phone at its next sync, exactly like an edit made in the field. A phone’s own unsent work is never overwritten: it is merged with what you chose, field by field, as always.

If somebody has changed the same field again since the conflict, or brought a deleted feature back, using the other version would overwrite newer work. Mapit Cloud refuses it and says so, and nothing is changed. Reload the page to see what stands now; you can still keep it. With Use all of, the fields before the one refused keep the version you chose, and that field and the ones after it are left as they are.

Show resolved lists every conflict already resolved: who resolved it, when, and whether they kept what stood or used the other version. Nothing is deleted from it.

An edit to a layer that was later removed can only be kept, as the record: the layer is gone, so there is nothing to put it back into. An edit the layer’s rules refused is kept the same way; to use it, change the value on a phone so it fits the rule, and sync again. The same is true of GNSS details that arrived for a feature the project did not hold; they are already in the project, kept without their feature. Resolving changes the project’s data only; it never changes a project’s structure, and it never touches a photo, whose files stay on the phones that took them.