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Question

Mobile App - Automatically make files available offline

Mobile Workflow
Updated May 20, 2015
asked on May 20, 2015

I am looking for a way to automate the 'Save copy offline' process within the mobile application.  The use case is this...

Every day a field-rep visits locations throughout the state without internet access.  He/she will need to fill out fillable PDF forms at each visit.  Once he/she is back at the office (with internet access) they upload the files and workflow processes them.  While this is happening, schedules are being put together for the next day and placed in the [%Field Tech] folder.  Sometimes there can be 10+ files for one day and having the field-tech access each one and make it available offline is cumbersome, plus the user group is not the most tech savvy so we need to keep it as simple as possible.  It would be ideal for workflow to run and mark these files 'Available offline' for each of the field-techs and upon daily 'synching' it would automatically add these to their 'Offline available docs' list.  Any help is appreciated!  

Nate

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Replies

replied on May 20, 2015

Hi, Nathan, 

 

Thank you for reaching out with the use case.

I have a couple questions to follow up:

  1. The files that you want to automate to be offline are those generated schedules?
  2. And when will be the best sync time for field-tech? Since you said your workers are all over the states, they probably need it synced based on their local time?
  3. What type of devices (phone or tablet?) do your workers use? And what platform? (iOS or Android or Windows)
  4. Does your user use their own device, or it's one device shared by several people?
  5. And are those to-be-offline files only accessible to one person, or should be accessible to a group of people?
  6. Are these files always in the same folder and be deleted when the day is over, so that mobile app might just check that folder every night?
  7. And after it's done after a day, does your user need to manually remove those docs from offline because it sounds it'll get pretty long? Do you anticipate that part to be automated too? If a file is offline, workflow prolly can't reach it. And only way is to set an expiration time, e.g. the file will be offline only for one day. Or it won't help bc sometimes user need to keep it offline longer?
  8. One last question, with offline document, now you can just view them, do you anticipate to do more with that and what do you want to achieve? And do you require your user to setup passcode to keep offline documents safe?

 

Thank you for all the feedback, and we'll be looking into that.

 

Best，

 

Julia

 

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replied on May 20, 2015

Hey Julia,

Below are my answers to your questions.  

1.  The files to be generated are Fillable PDFs, not scheduled.  The PDFs are generated based on the next days schedule.  i.e. who calls in for visits/service for the next day

2.  They are all in one state, so timezones won't matter.  The sync time would vary anyways, it would basically sync whenever the user connects his/her device to the internet.  

3.  iOS devices - iPads

4.  Each user has his/her own iPad

5.  They will be accessible to a specific person, based on their log-in.  Today, we put the files in the field-tech's folder and he/she is the only one with access to that folder.  

6.  Yes, files will be in the same folder each time.  The files are not deleted, they are processed, which ultimately moves them from the 'queue' folder

7.  It would be ideal to only allow these files to be available offline for a set period of time.  i.e. 1-2 days

8.  The end-users will be filling these documents out each day, not just viewing them.  It will be a PDF, and once they visit the site, they will fill-in information inside the form.  No passcode needed for the phone, but this might be something the customer would like... We're using the passcode feature of the iPad currently.  

Hope that helps answer your questions!  Let me know if you need anything else.  

Thanks,

Nate

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