Today's quite a big day. It's the day we released an update for statscloud that allows you to keep a project saved on your device so you can return to it at any time.

That's right. Up until this point, all projects you worked on in statscloud were just temporary. You could export your data (as well as tables, charts, analysis reports and code) from your projects whenever you wanted to. However, when you closed the app, you had to bid your project a tearful goodbye as all the information in it was deleted from your device.

Until now.

Now, you can opt to keep a statscloud project saved to your device. When you do, the entire project is synced to your device automatically so you can close the app and open the project again to pick up right where you left off. What's more, you don't even need to worry about losing your internet connection because your saved project isn't synced to the cloud; it's synced directly to your device - and only your device.

Great, but you might be asking: why on earth wasn't this a feature to begin with? Well, the main reason is that it would have slowed down our development considerably. You see, as we were developing and adding features to the app, we naturally had to change a lot of stuff behind the scenes, including the way we stored information in your projects. Adding backward-compatibility to accommodate all these changes would have been an awful a lot of work, would inevitably have lead to some pesky bugs, and would ultimately have meant we wouldn't have been able to develop the app at the pace we have.

Saving files offline

This is actually the same reason we've never had statscloud files (e.g., "project.stcd") that you can save offline and then re-open in the app. However, we also opted not to do this because it's not really conducive to the way modern apps work. In general, we're moving beyond the need to store lots of fiddly files offline and trying to manage versions of them with awkward file names; you know the ones I mean: "Project (amended) v2 final FINAL.stcl".

In future versions of statscloud, we intend to make it possible to share full projects with others via share links or add collaborators to projects. That means you won't ever have to share different versions of the same project with each other; the main version of your project will always be available in your dashboard, and in the dashboards of whoever you'd like to share it with.

Limitations

While this 'saving projects' update is all good news, it's important to remember that it does come with some limitations: Your project is saved to your device so, if your device goes down, your project goes with it. We also only allow one project per device, simply to keep the amount of data stored on your device manageable.

By far the best way to store projects in statscloud is with a PRO account. PRO accounts allow you to save multiple projects to your own personal cloud. This means you access them on multiple devices and never need to worry about backing up your work offline.

Currently, we're limiting how many PRO accounts we offer at statscloud.app, so the best way to get hold of a PRO account is to run your own instance of statscloud. We have some details on doing so here, but do get in touch with us so we can help get you up and running.

Summary

Overall, we hope you're happy with this update and make some good use of it. I know that only being able to work with temporary projects was a barrier for some people and prevented the app being adopted more widely. Now that we offer this saved project option, I'm really looking forward to seeing more and more people using the app and even more universities switching their teaching over to statscloud.