Many fields are located in areas with poor or nonexistent cellular service. FieldClock is designed to work around this limitation and still provide you as much functionality as possible, even when your device can't connect to the internet.
When the FieldClock app is unable to communicate with the FieldClock servers, the app will continue to work in "offline mode". Due to the way the app works, the following features are not available in offline mode:
- Signing-in to the app
- Synchronization
- "Clock-out All" functionality within a job*
*- The "Clock-out All" functionality will work in offline mode as long as the job has never been synced with the server. If the job has been synced with the server, your device may not be aware of changes that other devices have made to the same job and cannot accurately clock out all employees.
All other functionality will remain intact. In offline mode you can still create jobs, clock-in employees, record piecework, create quality notes, print temporary badges, etc.
You can also be certain that your data will still be recorded properly while in offline mode. When devices sync with FieldClock servers, the data is checked to make sure it is valid and any conflicting data is corrected. (For example, if an employee has overlapping time entries from multiple devices that were in offline mode, the time entries will be corrected so they don't overlap.)
Best Practices for Offline Mode
- If a crew boss will be offline for most of the day, they may want to put their device in airplane mode before creating any jobs. This will prevent the jobs from syncing at all and will keep the "Clock-out All" functionality enabled.
- If the FieldClock app has been in the background for a long period of time before it enters cellular/WiFi range, launch the app to be sure that it syncs your data.