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Autosave & Drafts

Overview — What Saves Itself and What Does Not

Several pages in NSCAT now save your work as you go. About two seconds after you stop typing, whatever you have entered is sent to the server without you clicking anything. A small chip beside the page title tells you where things stand.

This does not replace the save button. It means that if your session expires, your laptop sleeps, or the network drops, you are very unlikely to lose more than the last few seconds of work.

Which pages autosave

Page

Autosaves

Interview Composer

Yes

Interview Response

Yes

Focus Group Response

Yes

Observations

Yes

Recommendations

Yes

Survey (the respondent's own view)

Yes

Survey Composer

No

Survey Responses (comment coding)

No

Lessons Learned

No

Reports and exports

Nothing to save

 

HEADS UP  The three pages in bold are the ones to watch. Comment coding in particular is slow, absorbing work that people routinely do for an hour at a stretch — and it does not autosave. Save each page of comments as you finish it.

 

GOOD TO KNOW  Autosave does not run on a locked activity, or where you have read access without write. If the chip is missing on a page that should have it, that is why.

Reading the status chip

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Chip

Colour

What it means

Saved

Green

Everything is on the server. Hover for Last saved N ago.

Saving…

Blue

A save is in flight. It lasts a moment.

Offline

Orange

Your browser is offline, or the network failed. Your changes are held locally and will be sent when the connection returns.

Save failed

Red

The save was rejected. Your changes are not on the server.

Hovering the chip shows when the last successful save happened — Last saved 12s ago, Last saved 3m ago — or No saves yet this session if nothing has been saved yet.

PRO TIP  Glance at the chip before you leave a page. Green means you can close the tab safely. Orange or red means stop and read the next two sections.

When it says Offline

Your changes are kept in your browser and queued. When the connection comes back, NSCAT sends them automatically and the chip returns to Saved.

HEADS UP  Keep the tab open. The queue lives in the browser page — closing the tab while the chip is orange throws away whatever was waiting to be sent.

 

GOOD TO KNOW  NSCAT makes a few attempts to send the queued work once you are back online, a second apart. If they all fail, the chip turns red and the queue is cleared. At that point your work is still in the local draft (below), but it is not on the server.

When it says Save failed

This means the server refused the save rather than the network failing. The usual causes:

Cause

What to do

You have read access but not write

Nothing you can fix — ask a Team Lead

The activity was locked while you were working

Ask an administrator to unlock it

A required field is empty or invalid

Fix it; the chip clears on the next successful save

The whole application is failing for everyone

Report it — this is infrastructure

 

HEADS UP  A red chip means your recent typing is not saved. Do not close the tab. Fix whatever is wrong and make a small edit to trigger another save, or copy your text somewhere safe before you leave the page.

Draft recovery

While a save is pending, NSCAT also keeps a copy in your browser. If you return to a page and that copy is still there — because the save never completed — a banner appears at the top:

Draft found from 18 August 2026, 14:12. [ Restore ] [ Discard ]

·        Restore puts the draft's contents back into the form.

·        Discard throws it away and keeps what is on the server.

PRO TIP  Restore first, then read what you get. If the draft turns out to be older or thinner than what is on the server, you have lost nothing — nothing is committed until you save. Retyping before you have looked is how people lose work they still had.

 

HEADS UP  The draft lives in the browser you were using, on the machine you were using. A draft taken on your laptop will not appear when you sign in from a different computer.

 

GOOD TO KNOW  Once a save succeeds, the local draft is cleared. A draft banner appearing means a save genuinely did not complete — it is not a routine prompt.

Autosave and the session expiry warning

The two are related but not the same thing. Autosave protects the content of the page you are on. The session warning is about your sign-in.

PRO TIP  When the 30-minute prompt appears, glance at the chip. Green means you can re-login without hurrying. Orange or red means deal with the save first — re-logging in will not rescue work that never reached the server.

A Practical Approach

·        Watch the chip, not the clock. Green is the only state that means your work is safe.

·        Still press Save at natural break points. It costs nothing and it gives you a definite point to come back to.

·        Never close a tab on an orange or red chip.

·        Restore drafts before retyping.

·        On the three pages that do not autosave, save per page — especially comment coding.

Common Problems

What you see

What it means

No chip on a page that should have one

The activity is locked, or you have read-only access.

Chip stuck on Saving…

A slow connection. Wait; it will resolve to Saved or Offline.

Chip Offline but your internet works

The server is unreachable. Keep the tab open.

Chip Save failed on one page only

Usually a permission problem or an invalid field.

Chip Save failed everywhere, for everyone

Infrastructure. Report it.

A draft banner you did not expect

A previous save did not complete. Restore and check.

No draft banner after losing work

The draft was on a different browser or machine, or the save had actually succeeded.

Draft banner keeps coming back

You dismissed it without discarding. Use Discard to clear it.

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