Can O4W work off line (O4W)
At 09 JUL 2022 07:37:49PM cmeyer wrote:
I have a request for a mobile app to collect data while the phone is out of internet range. My electrical clients work in remote areas where there is no phone reception. Is is possible to temporarily store the data and when the phone has internet reception the data is sent to the server, just like Outlook sending a draft email once in reception range.
Any advice would be grateful.
Chris.
At 11 JUL 2022 08:17AM Jared Bratu wrote:
Chris,
No, while it technically may be possible in reality it wouldn't be feasible. Since O4W handles all of your events server-side in BASIC+ code you would have to rewrite those events in pure JavaScript (along with caching any data those events needed to complete). At that point, you would be best just writing the collection app (or at least the collection screen) with an offline-first approach and having it integrate with O4W depending on what online tasks your app needs to do.
At 11 JUL 2022 08:33AM Andrew McAuley wrote:
We did this with our pest control app by writing locally to a copy of OI, then having a timed event that checked for a working HTPS object and transferred the info over when there was a connection. We take a similar approach for synchronising multi-site datacentres. Data entered locally is live nationally in sub-seconds normally.
World leaders in all things RevSoft
At 11 JUL 2022 08:52AM bob carten wrote:
Andrew's solution work with Surface tablets or other Windows mobile devices.
If you search the web for "mobile data collection app offline" you'll find toolkits which might let you develop a non-windows mobile application which can collect information in offline mode. You could then write something to import the collected data into OpenInsight.
At 11 JUL 2022 08:53AM bshumsky wrote:
Hi, Andrew. Just to clarify, that approach will work for something like a laptop or tablet in the field, but not for "just" a phone, right?
- Bryan Shumsky
At 11 JUL 2022 08:54AM Andrew McAuley wrote:
Oh yes, I omitted that bit :). The first draft of the product used non-Windows devices, but they got so cheap it was easier just to go with full OIs on the devices :)
World leaders in all things RevSoft
At 11 JUL 2022 08:56AM Andrew McAuley wrote:
Correct. It made it all so much easier :)
World leaders in all things RevSoft
At 11 JUL 2022 10:46AM Donald Bakke wrote:
Jared didn't note this, but we've had similar requirements with web/mobile apps as well. We've learned that pure web apps are limited in the amount of data that can be stored offline. This limit increases if the mobile app is added to the home screen, since that requires user interaction and is thus considered a trusted web app. Yet, even this increased limit wasn't enough for our client so we had to port the web app into a native app to get full access to the device's storage.
At 11 JUL 2022 07:43PM cmeyer wrote:
I notice some other apps store the captured data in an email and rely on Outlook to send the data (including a photo) when the internet is available. If that is a feasible approach then I need to figure out how to upload and store data before the employee starts work while connected to the internet. I realize that is not exactly live data but maybe a compromise.
Chris
At 12 JUL 2022 09:21AM bshumsky wrote:
I notice some other apps store the captured data in an email and rely on Outlook to send the data (including a photo) when the internet is available. If that is a feasible approach then I need to figure out how to upload and store data before the employee starts work while connected to the internet. I realize that is not exactly live data but maybe a compromise.
Chris
Hi, Chris. As others have already pointed out, all O4W screens are generated in OpenInsight, and then "served up" on the client device, so O4W can't generate ANY screens, or process ANY information, "locally" by default. You could try to add in some jQuery plugins, or your own javascript, but O4W itself can't handle doing anything off-line.
- Bryan Shumsky
At 12 JUL 2022 10:12AM Donald Bakke wrote:
I notice some other apps store the captured data in an email and rely on Outlook to send the data (including a photo) when the internet is available. If that is a feasible approach then I need to figure out how to upload and store data before the employee starts work while connected to the internet. I realize that is not exactly live data but maybe a compromise.
Chris
This is exactly what one of our mobile apps do. The user runs the app while still online and downloads the content they will need for their daily job. Then the app works offline for the bulk of the day. When the user comes back online the app will sync with the server. In our case, the sync is done manually. That is, the user has a menu to that initiates this operation.
Again, this requires custom programming as Jared and Bryan have indicated.