Data Sync & Missions🔗
Data Sync (also called Missions) is how you share map items, files, photos, and updates with your team in real time — across any TAK.NZ client. It's the feature that turns individual situational awareness into genuine team coordination.
What a Mission is🔗
A Mission is a shared, named collection of content — map markers, drawings, routes, files, photos, and user logs — that everyone subscribed to it can see and (depending on their role) contribute to. Think of it as a shared folder that lives on the TAK Server and stays in sync across every device subscribed to it, whether that's ATAK, TAK Aware, WinTAK, or CloudTAK.
Missions are stored server-side, so:
- Anyone who joins a Mission gets the full history of what's already been added
- Changes made by one user appear for everyone else subscribed, in near real time
- Users who are offline when a change happens receive it automatically the next time they reconnect
Why use a Mission instead of just the map🔗
Individual markers placed directly on the map are visible to everyone on the same channel, but they aren't organised, versioned, or easy to manage as a set. A Mission gives you:
- Organisation — a named collection focused on a specific task, incident, or exercise
- Roles and permissions — control over who can view versus edit versus administer
- History — every change is logged, and you can view or restore previous versions of an item
- Resilience — offline changes are queued and synced automatically once reconnected, with conflict resolution if the same item was edited by two people
Roles within a Mission🔗
When a Mission is created, a default role is set for anyone who joins:
| Role | Can view content | Can add/edit/delete content | Can manage the Mission |
|---|---|---|---|
| Read-Only | Yes | No | No |
| Subscriber | Yes | Yes | No |
| Owner | Yes | Yes | Yes (including deleting the Mission) |
All roles can invite others to the Mission. Owners are additionally responsible for admin actions — changing the default role, description, password, or deleting the Mission entirely from the server.
Typical use cases🔗
- Incident coordination — a Mission scoped to a specific incident, with map items, photos, and files relevant to that response, cleaned up once the incident concludes
- Search and rescue operations — search area boundaries, tasked search patterns, and found-item markers shared live between search teams
- Training exercises — exercise-specific content kept separate from live operational channels
- Standing reference data — a long-lived Mission with reference material (e.g. staging areas, resupply points) that doesn't need to be re-created each time
See Using Missions for the step-by-step workflow.
Where this fits with channels🔗
Channels control who can see live position tracking and general map traffic; Missions are a more deliberate, organised layer on top of that for specific tasks or incidents. You don't need a Mission for everyday situational awareness — channels alone cover that. Reach for a Mission when you need to coordinate a defined set of content with a defined group of people, with history and structure.
Next steps🔗
Head to Using Missions for how to create, join, and manage a Mission from your client.