Offline mode, finally

The most requested feature in Kiosk's history is not a feature. It is the absence of a failure: the app should work when the phone has no signal. From today it does.

What works offline

• The day's jobs, with customer details, history and attached documents, cached before the technician leaves the depot.
• Checking in and out, notes, photographs, signatures and parts used.
• The next job's address and directions, cached when the previous job is opened.

What waits for a signal

Anything that involves another person: re-sequencing, new jobs, messages from the dispatcher. These queue and apply in order when the phone reconnects, and the technician sees a banner while they wait.

What we got wrong the first time

The first beta synced everything at once on reconnect and drained a phone from sixty percent to twenty in a car park. Sync is now incremental, and photographs wait for wifi unless the technician says otherwise.

Revised in August: photographs now also upload on mobile data when the job is marked complete, after feedback that the wifi wait left jobs looking unfinished on the board.