Does the app work offline (without internet connection)?

In fact, our first customer was a disaster management company, so being able to use the app after a hurricane or flood without network connectivity was a critical requirement early on for us when building our platform. 

Unlike other platforms that rely on web apps or web forms, our native apps provide offline capabilities. Our app works by downloading and storing all data locally on the user’s device (encrypted) and keeping this data up to date whenever the app has an internet connection.

Offline Considerations

Certain key platform features handle offline scenarios, enabling work to continue uninterrupted.

Offline – Form Submissions

Any form entries or other data captured by the user are stored locally on the submitting device until the app successfully uploads the data to our cloud servers. If an Internet connection is not immediately available after a form submission, the submission will remain queued on your device while our app performs regular checks for an Internet connection. The app will synchronize your data with our servers when it has a working Internet connection.

Offline – System Data Sources

All system data sources are synchronized to a user’s device immediately once they have a working Internet connection and their device synchronizes with our servers. When offline, you will still have full access to all the data synchronized from your system data sources’ last successful data synchronization. This data is stored locally on the user’s device and is ready for use on any of your screens.

Offline – Connected Data Sources

A connected data source is a data source that is linked to a 3rd party system. This could be a Google Sheet, MySQL, SQL Server, or a REST API endpoint that our cloud servers will poll at regular specified periods (e.g., every 15 minutes). The data is saved on our cloud servers and then synchronized to your user’s devices whenever they do a synchronization. As such, there will always be a delay with this type of data source as it relies on an additional synchronization schedule specified in the data source settings.

This means that users can still collect data through Form screens, access Documents, and progress Tasks even if they are in a location without network connectivity.

This also makes our app a perfect fit for Wi-Fi-only devices, allowing workers to head out and work in the field and then return to the office to synchronize their day’s work from the app using the office Wi-Fi network.

Online Considerations

With these offline capabilities baked into our app and system architecture, you’d be forgiven for thinking that one doesn’t really need an Internet connection to use our platform. However, there are still a few exceptions where our platform requires an internet connection.

First time Logging in to the app

You definitely need Internet access the first time you log in to the app, as the app needs to authenticate the user with our cloud servers and download all assigned Screens and data before they can start using the app.

Map display/access

Currently, we do not support offline mapping, so all maps in the app will require an internet connection to stream map image tiles to the device. Any Screens that require the use of a map will show a blank grey area where the map should be if the user is offline.

Offline map support is planned for some time in the future.

Real-time data scenarios

For the majority of general usage scenarios, access to real-time/live data is not necessary to enable workers to get their jobs done.

An internet connection will obviously be needed; however, when data is changing rapidly, data must always be requested from an online source. 

If your app requires data lookups using a REST field in-app, you will need an Internet connection. You will also need Internet access if your app uses a data source configured to run using Platform Sync (previously known as Hosted GET).