Major New Feature - App Heartbeat

[biblicabeebli]

We have been working on a feature called App Heartbeart.

This work includes both apps and the backend repositories. It has been heavily tested and there are no known negative effects, so we have decided that to enable it by default across all studies once your backend servers are updated. The feature has a configurable timer and a configurable message that participants will see. Updating those settings has immediate effect, except for devices that are offline.

What is App Heartbeat?

This feature started as part of the 2.5.0 release of the iOS Beiwe app, as an effort to get it stable and more persistent. The app sends a "heartbeat" signal to the server every ~5 minutes in order to provide a consistent signal that the app is running. When this signal, along with other network activity from a given device, goes dark for an extended (configurable!) period your Data Processing server will send a push notification to the device asking the participant to open the Beiwe app.

Why do we need this?

There are scenarios that no amount of careful design can solve. iOS can still shut down an app, the participant may dismiss the app from the switcher, the device itself may be restarted or updated, and there are always, always bugs. Android is a little more consistent, but there have been many additions since Android 4.4 "KitKat" _(Yeah*.) that have introduced mechanisms we must fight with in order to keep the data coming in.

With this feature you are able to examine push notification history to determine whether your study participants were or are unreachable, and we are working to surface several other metadata streams to provide the best possible insight on participant compliance (and also to find and fix bugs!).

How do I configure it?

Go to your study's device settings page, there will be two new fields:

Status:

• Backend: this feature has been stealthily present but disabled except on a per-participant basis while we got the kinks worked out.
  • The final commit enabling the feature globally is tracked on the branch finish-heartbeat, which is currently the same commit as staged-updates, and will be merged into main early next week.
  • This has been merged into main.
  • The tracking issue for this feature is/was finalize heartbeat feature #375
• iOS: the feature was primarily developed for iOS and is already present in 2.5.0, which has been live on the app store for over a month.
  • Older versions of the iOS app will receive the notifications too, but may not report in as reliably. We encourage you to reach out to any such participants and have them update the app.
• Android: heartbeat is present in 3.6.0, which will be made available via the download link ASAP.
  • We are still trying to squash a bug, but it's almost ready.
  • The tracking issue for this release is Android App 3.6.0 Release is now available beiwe-android#96
  • Older versions of the Android app will not receive these notifications.
  • This work allows us to implement a feature, available starting with 3.6.0, where we can notify Android users that there is a new version of the app.

[biblicabeebli]

@hydawo This has been deployed.

[hydawo]

@biblicabeebli great, a few questions

• Are there any implications we should consider before broadly announcing this feature's availability?
• It is toggled off on studies by default correct? So studies need to "opt-in" or participants (via the study team) can "opt-in" on an individual basis?
• Should we let a few studies try it live first, then broadly announce it's availability?

cc: @MMel099 @jprince127

[biblicabeebli]

@hydawo I will responde to your middle question by directing you to this comment made by one... @hydawo The feature is on by default and already rolled out.

Please let me know if you think we should reverse course a bit here.