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Quickbase mobile – best practices for entering data while offline

By Brian Cafferelli posted 07-21-2021 14:37

  

Quickbase mobile – best practices for entering data while offline

Whether your team delivers products to clients, conducts inspections, or services equipment, you can rely on Quickbase to solve challenges with your last-mile operational logistics. No matter where you go, you can use the Quickbase native mobile application to log the right data at the right time. And you can even add records while offline, uploading them when you get back to your home or office. But once you’ve learned how to use this offline capability, what’s the best way to prepare your team to get the most out of it? Here are the 4 steps we recommend you take before deploying a Quickbase app where records will be added while offline:

 

  1. Confirm your session expiration setting is at least as long as your team’s shift. You need to be connected to the internet to sign in using the Quickbase mobile app. So you need to make sure that your users do not have their session expire before they need to use offline mode. You can extend the time period before your users will be required to log in again. Check yours in the admin console and adjust as needed before adding records offline. The session timeout should be set to a period of time at least the length of your app users’ shifts. You will need one of your realm admins to complete this step.



  2. Inform your users that they need to log into the mobile app at the start of their shift. Since you need to be connected to the internet to sign into the Quickbase mobile app, your users will need to sign in at the start of their each of their shifts. After they launch the app and make sure they are signed in, they should check to see if they have any records in their offline queue that need to be uploaded. Once that’s complete, they can return to the home screen of their mobile device. Make sure they do not force-close the app afterwards, or they will be signed out.

  3. Test your workflow for adding records offline using airplane mode first. When building an app for use on a laptop, app builders use the Test as Role and Test as User features to evaluate their workflow before rolling it out. You can do something similar with your mobile offline workflows. If you put your mobile device into airplane mode, the Quickbase mobile app will switch to offline mode. You can then step through your workflow to test it out before you begin relying on it in the field.

  4. Confirm that the data and schema of the app you’d like to use offline includes only Windows-1252 characters. Only Windows-1252 characters are currently supported when adding records offline via the native Quickbase mobile app. If any of the record data, the App Name, or any of the Table or Field Names include other characters, such as letters from non-Latin alphabets like Chinese or Arabic, you will need to find an alternative method.

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