Working offline, for your staff

Some work happens where the signal doesn't reach: a loft, a plant room, a basement. Your application can let some of its pages keep working on a phone with no signal. Staff read what they opened and record what they did, and the changes are sent when the signal comes back.

This article is written for the people who use your application, such as your heating technicians or cleaners. You can share it with them.

Before anyone can work offline

Working offline has to be switched on twice.

1. For the application. Your application says which pages may be kept on a phone, and which roles may do it. To set that up, ask for it on Changes in your own words, for example "let technicians use their job list and job pages without a signal". Because it moves your data onto phones, someone on our team approves that change. See Ask for a change.
2. For each person, on each phone. Nothing is kept on any phone until the person using it turns it on, on that phone.

Turn it on, on your phone

1. Sign in on your phone while you have a signal.
2. Follow the link Working offline on this device, under the menu.
3. Tick Keep what I open on this device, so I can keep working without a signal.

The same screen shows which pages may be kept, which details of them, how many records the phone holds, when it last reached the server, and when the copy will be deleted. If your role can't work offline, it says so and offers no switch.

Put it on your home screen

Your application can be added to a phone's home screen, if the phone's browser offers it: look for "Add to home screen" or "Install" in the browser's menu. It then opens like an app. With working offline turned on, it opens even with no signal at all.

Before you lose the signal

Open the pages you will need while you still have a signal. The phone keeps what you open: a list you looked at, and each record you opened. A record you never opened on this phone isn't on it.

With no signal

A line at the top of each page says Offline, and when the phone last read from the server.

• Doing the work. Press a page's buttons or fill in its forms as usual. The page says Kept on this device. It will be sent when you are back online. The line at the top says how many changes are waiting. Nobody else sees them until they are sent.
• New records. On a form your application lets you use offline, you can add a new record. It is given its proper place when it is sent.
• Photos. Where a page lets you take a photo, you can take it offline. It is kept on the phone and sent later. Where it was taken, the phone that took it and when are removed from the photo first. A phone keeps up to 50 MB of photos waiting; when that is full, it says so, and you need a signal to send them before taking more.

What doesn't work offline

• Pages your application doesn't keep offline, and settings pages. They say they are not kept on this device.
• Photos, documents and videos already on a record. They show nothing until you are back online.
• The activity and history parts of a page.
• Running something on several rows of a list at once.
• Taking a photo on a record you created offline. Wait until it has been sent.

When the signal comes back

The waiting changes are sent automatically, in the order you made them, and the line at the top says Back online — sending so many changes. Each one is checked as if you had just pressed the button: your role, what you may change, and whether the record still allows it. A change is only ever made once, however often the connection drops.

Most of the time you don't need to do anything. Two things need you:

• Someone changed the record while you were offline. Your change is not made, and nothing is overwritten or merged. On Working offline on this device you see what the record said when you made your change and what it says now. Choose Send my change anyway or Discard my change.
• The change was refused, for example because the job was cancelled or your role no longer allows it. It is marked Not done, with the reason, and stays there until you press Dismiss. A refused change is never lost without you being told.

How long the phone keeps it

The copy on the phone is deleted:

• 7 days after the phone last reached the server,
• or 12 hours after, where the application holds children's or health information,
• and never later than your sign-in lasts.

Each time you use the application with a signal, the clock starts again, so a phone in daily use keeps working. Changes still waiting when the copy is deleted go with it, and the screen says how many.

Signing out, and turning it off

• Signing out deletes everything the phone kept: the pages, the photos and any changes not yet sent. If changes are waiting, it tells you how many first. Send them before you sign out if you need them.
• Turning the switch off deletes it all in the same way, and warns you first if changes are waiting.
• If someone else signs in on the same phone, your copy is deleted before they see anything.
• If the application is open in more than one tab, they share the same copy and signing out in one ends them all.

Keeping it safe

What the phone keeps is encrypted, with a key the browser won't give out, so it can't be read from the phone's storage or a backup. It holds only the pages and details your application allows. It doesn't protect a phone left unlocked: anyone using your phone while you are signed in sees what you see. Lock your phone, and sign out of a shared one.