My debrief won’t upload

When an upload fails (no signal, hospital Wi-Fi, a dead zone) the recording is stored on your device, with everything you tagged it with. You never need to record it again. It retries by itself every time you open DebriefMD and whenever your connection comes back, and you can force a retry any time with Try upload now in the queue panel on your dashboard.

While a debrief is waiting in the queue it appears only in the queue panel. It joins your dated list of debriefs once the audio has actually arrived.

Uploading does not delete the recording from your phone. Once the audio reaches us the queue item moves from waiting to upload over to waiting to be processed, and through that whole stretch the audio exists in two places: on our servers and still on your device.

The copy on your device is released at one moment only, when your assessment is ready. A debrief that fails in processing keeps its copy, deliberately, because that is exactly the situation where you would want it. The other way it goes is if you discard the debrief yourself, which is meant to be the only way to lose a recording on purpose.

Until an upload succeeds, the copy on your device is the only copy. Unless the panel says the recording is protected from automatic clearing, your browser is allowed to clear stored data if the device runs low on space. That is rare, but the audio of a finished conversation cannot be re-recorded. When you next have a good connection, open DebriefMD and let the queue drain rather than leaving it for days.

A red Can’t upload badge means the block is on our side, not your connection: the server refused the upload for a reason no retry can change, most often a form template your program retired while the recording sat offline. The server’s own explanation is shown in the item’s details.

Retrying won’t change this, so the panel stops promising it will. Ask your program director what to file the debrief against. Only discard it if you’re certain there’s nothing to be done, because discarding deletes the audio with it.

A recording that keeps failing while other things load fine is worth telling us about. That pattern usually means something we need to fix, not something you can. Use the button below; the pre-filled details identify the stuck recording without including anything that was said in it.

Discarding removes the recording from your device permanently, and the conversation it captured can’t be recreated. It exists for the case where an upload will genuinely never succeed. If you’re not sure that’s true, ask first.