Workflows for intermittent connectivity
The device holds the work locally and keeps accepting it, rather than refusing until a bar appears.
Operations do not stop when the network does. Offline and sync workflows keep frontline work moving and reconcile it when the connection returns.
In scope
What offline support covers
Three things that have to hold when the signal does not.
Reconciliation on reconnect
What was recorded offline is posted in order when the line returns, and conflicts are surfaced rather than guessed.
Field and warehouse operation
Yards, cold stores, basements and vehicles — the places the work happens and the signal does not.
Two operators edit the same record on opposite sides of a dead connection. What the system does when they both reconnect is the design decision, and it is made before the first line of code.
What changes
Three things that stop
Writing it on paper
The record is captured once, on the device, as it happens.
Losing the gap
What happened offline is posted, in order, with its times.
Overwriting each other
A conflict is raised to a person rather than resolved by luck.