Getting started guide

Help

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Get a free QFieldCloud account

Desktop preparation

Go to the registration page, enter your details and create a new QFieldCloud account.

Registration form

Edit your profile

Change your personal settings. Add a profile picture or get an overview about your ownerships and memberships in organizations.

View your cloud projects

Search and choose a project from the list or start to create a new project.

QFieldCloud projects overview

Connect to QFieldCloud on QGIS Desktop

Desktop preparation

In order to connect to QFieldCloud, you need the QFieldSync plugin in QGIS. The next steps show you how you can install and synchronize your data to and from QFieldCloud.

Install QFieldSync

Open the QGIS plugin manager by going to the Plugins -> Manage and install Plugins… menu.

Find QFieldSync in the list of plugins and install the latest version by clicking the Install Plugin button.

Note

Since QFieldCloud is still in beta phase, there are frequent updates and fixes. Please upgrade your QFieldSync plugin often. In case of an issue, please try upgrading to the latest release before reporting.

Successful installation

After successful installation, a new toolbar appears:

Login to QFieldCloud

Click the cloud icon in the QFieldSync toolbar. A new login screen will appear:

Login screen

Enter your credentials previously created during account registration.

Note

If you use a password in QGIS for the first time, it will ask you to set a master password that manages all the other passwords used in QGIS. More information about the master password here: QGIS documentation

Explore the projects overview screen: your current user underlined and blue, a logout button down-left, a cloud button to create a new project and, on the right, a refresh button to grab the freshest project list. Newly registered users will see an empty table and as soon as they create new projects, the list will grow. The projects overview screen looks like this:

Projects overview in QFieldSync

The icons indicate the cloud and local status of the different projects.

Local status:

indicates that there is only a remote cloud project existing. indicates that the cloud project is also locally stored.

Cloud status:

Red: status failed —> the project is invalid and is not understood by the cloud. The user needs to fix/upload their .qgs/.qgz project. Brown: status busy —> we are working on your project, please be patient. You cannot do much with the project in the meanwhile. Green: status ok —> the project is successfully undestood by the cloud. You can try to download on QField, but the success is not guaranteed.

The status of each project is shown with a tooltip.

By double-clicking on a project in the list, you can see and edit the specific project properties.

Project properties in QFieldCloud

Create and configure your cloud project

Create a new project by clicking the cloud button, down-left. First, you will need to choose how to create the new project between

• "Convert currently open project to cloud project" A new QFieldCloud-compatible project is created from the currently opened QGIS project. In order to do so, datasets will be copied into an export directory that will act as your local mirror. Vector datasets will be converted to geopackage format to facilitate data synchronization from multiple devices while other dataset types will be copied to the new project lotation.

To convert a current project, a completely empty directory is mandatory.

• "Create a new empty QFieldCloud project" A new blank QFieldCloud project will be created. You will be responsible to move all the project-related files within the selected local directory, with the project file at its root. Project files will only be uploaded when you click the synchronize button. Make sure the selected contains no more than one QGIS project file.

Project details

A form will ask you for project name, description and local directory. In the local directory you can get different situations:

• The entered path does not contain a QGIS project file yet.
• The entered path contains one QGIS project file.
• Please select local directory where the project to be stored.
• The entered path is a relative path. Please enter an absolute directory path.
• The entered path is not an directory. Please enter a valid directory path.
• The entered path is not an existing directory. It will be created after you submit this form.
• Multiple project files have been found in the directory. Please leave exactly one QGIS project in the root directory.

Configure your project layers for QField

Configure the project layers by clicking the fifth icon in the QFieldSync toolbar . Here you can configure QFieldCloud layer actions. Most of the time you need to configure a preference either to online or offline layers. For more fine grained control, in the advanced settings you can configure the action layer by layer. Get more information about how to configure your layers in the Get Started guide for QFieldSync!.

It is recommended to use GeoPackage layers for collaborative editing. See the advanced setup guide for more information about vector formats support.

Note

If you use experimental data sources without a primary key field (e.g. Shapefiles, GeoJSON etc), you must have a lowercase fid field that will be used as a primary key that uniquely identifies each feature.

Any QField supported raster and vector layer formats may be used as read-only data.

Project properties

Upload a project

Once configured, you can press the cloud button to open the synchronization dialog. Here you have to decide what do you prefer: the local file or the file on the cloud.

Synchronize

Now you should see your project and files on QFieldCloud

Field device

Fieldwork

Install QField

Download and install the latest version of QField from Google's play store, Apple's app store, or by downloading the lastest release for Windows, Linux, or macos.

Start working on your project

Welcome

Login with your username and password

Login

Select a project to download on your device:

Download

Synchronise your changes

Make a change to your data. Either create a new feature, delete a feature, or modify the geometry or attributes. Open the blue cloud button on the top left of the screen:

Cloud button

Choose an action with the change you made to your data. Each of the actions have an explanation what you should expect to happen:

Actions

Your changes are now available to everyone who has access to your project on the cloud.

You can find more information on Advanced QFieldCloud setup and QFieldCloud technical reference.