One of Mi4’s main products, Productioneer REDD (Remote Data Delivery), just celebrated its 4th birthday this Spring. Its goal is to enable data entry when there is a bad Internet connection, or no connection at all.
The data being entered gets queued in a local database on the users’ computers until they find a spot with a good connection from which they can upload it to the Productioneer servers. We designed REDD’s interface to look very similar to that of the main Productioneer software product because it’s what the pumpers are used to working with.
In order to work well offline, REDD must also download and store all the latest Productioneer data (currently the latest 31 days), so that it can read it and of course update it. It does so with its “full synchronization” feature. Every morning, a pumper finds a spot with a reliable Internet connection and runs this synchronization before heading to the field. Any data that may have been entered already gets uploaded first, and then the downloads begin.
When a connection is available and the user still wants to upload data using REDD, they have two options: have it sent automatically like in Productioneer, or queue it in the local database and then choose to upload it later – as if REDD was actually offline. The latter option comes in handy when the pumper wants to review the data before sending it, or if they have an Internet connection that goes on and off unpredictably.
Pumpers across many different organizations have given REDD good reviews. When we started developing REDD 4 years ago we were surprised how many oil fields had little to no Internet connection and 4 years later that is still the case. We implemented a lot of the online/offline logic that we developed for REDD when we rolled out our initial iOS app a year later in 2015. It would sure be easier for everyone if every oil field had a good Internet connection, but until that day comes we will continue updating and adding new features to REDD.
Happy Birthday REDD!