Working Offline
How inspections and issues keep working with no signal in the web app for a shift: what's on your device, how syncing works, and what needs a connection.
Basements, lift shafts, plant rooms and half-finished structures are exactly where inspections happen, and exactly where signal disappears. Inspections and issues keep working with no signal on the web, for a shift.
This page is about the web app, including when you run it in your phone's browser.
What you can do with no signal
| Action | Works offline |
|---|---|
| Open the app with no network (it reached the server from this device in the last 12 hours) | ✅ |
| Open an inspection on a project you've opened on this device, even one you have never opened | ✅ |
| Record Pass / Fail / N/A verdicts | ✅ |
| Add notes and remarks | ✅ |
| Take photos as evidence | ✅ |
| Enter test readings and measurements | ✅ |
| Raise a quality issue from a failed item | ✅ |
| Raise an issue, update it or move it on | ✅ |
| Advance to the next party / complete the sign-off | ✅ |
| Create a new inspection | ✅ |
| Start a reinspection | ❌ needs a connection |
| Delete an inspection | ❌ needs a connection |
| Edit templates, collections or policies | ❌ needs a connection |
| Daily logs and safety walks | ❌ need a connection |
None of the blocked inspection actions is something you do standing at the work, which is why they're the ones left online.
What's already on your device
You do not have to open an inspection while you still have signal in order to use it later. When you open a project with a connection, its inspections, the checklist templates and collections behind them, and its issues are copied to the device, and the pages of its newest 100 inspections are fetched in the background.
So you can arrive at a job, lose signal on the way in, and still open an inspection you have never looked at before.
The web app also opens from cold with no signal. If your phone closes the browser tab while it's in your pocket, reopening it brings the app back rather than an error page.
How long the web app keeps going
The web app trusts the person who last signed in on that device for 12 hours after it last reached the server. That covers a shift. After 12 hours with no signal it asks for a connection before it opens again. Nothing you recorded is lost: it waits on the device and is sent once you're back online.
Photos with no signal
Take the photo as you normally would. It's stored on the device immediately and counts as evidence right away, so if the item requires a photo before you can confirm a failure, you are not blocked waiting for an upload.
The file uploads later, automatically. The app makes sure the photo lands before the verdict that refers to it, so the record is never left pointing at a picture that isn't there.
How syncing works
Everything you do is saved to the device before the app tries the network. That's why working offline doesn't produce error messages: it's the normal path, not a failure path.
When the connection comes back, waiting work is sent automatically, in the order you did it.
- The sync button in the header shows whether everything is saved, waiting or sending, and opens a list of what is still waiting. An inspection with changes still to send shows a badge of its own.
- Your work is re-checked by the server as it arrives: turn order, evidence rules and policies all still apply, exactly as they would have online. Working offline does not let anything through that wouldn't have been allowed.
- If someone else changed the same record while you were out of signal, it is shown to you with the reason, rather than being silently overwritten.
Before you go out of signal
- Open your project once while you still have a connection so the latest inspections and templates are copied down.
- Check the sync list is clear before you head somewhere without coverage.
- Sync before you finish for the day. Get back into coverage and check everything has been sent before you put the phone down.
Don't let a browser be the only copy of several days' work. A browser can clear its storage when the phone runs short of space. The web app is built to carry you through a shift without signal, not for days.