South Florida houses are hard on phones. Concrete block walls, impact glass that is already installed, and gated communities at the edge of coverage all weaken signal. A field app that needs signal to save will eventually lose an opening, and the rep will find out after leaving.
“Works offline” has to mean all of this
Plenty of apps say they work offline. For field capture, that has to cover five things:
- The app opens with no signal. The whole app is stored on the phone after the first load, not just the page you were last on.
- Every tap saves on the phone first. Measurements and notes are kept on the phone right away, and sync once there’s signal.
- Photos wait in line. Photos are large, so they go into a queue on the phone. When signal comes back, they upload, and a dropped upload resumes where it stopped instead of starting over.
- The rep can see what’s waiting. A plain “Offline · 3 queued” tells the rep their work is safe and not sent yet.
- Nothing is overwritten quietly. When the phone syncs, it never throws away a measurement or a photo to resolve a conflict.
The originals are kept
Zero data loss applies to audio and photos too. If a photo is compressed for upload, or a voice note is turned into text, the original capture is kept as well.
Phone, tablet, iPhone, Android
Aperture™ runs in the browser as an installable web app. Reps add it to the home screen on iPhone, iPad or Android, and it opens and works like an app, including with no signal. Native app-store versions are on the roadmap, and the app is built so that step doesn’t require a rewrite.
What to check before you trust any field app
- Turn on airplane mode and measure a full test house. Do all openings and photos survive?
- Close the app halfway through and reopen it with no signal. Is everything still there?
- Turn signal back on and watch the queue. Does every photo arrive, and can you tell when it’s done?
- Edit the same job on two devices. Does the app keep both changes, or quietly drop one?
If any of those fails, the app will eventually lose a job. In this trade, that means a second trip to a homeowner who is getting quotes from your competitors.