FieldProofShort answer
What should an offline field service app protect?
A useful offline field service app must let crews create photos, readings, forms, notes and approvals without a connection, then show the state of every item when sync resumes. Viewing a cached schedule is not enough.
Product status: a limited FieldProof founding-pilot PWA is live at /app/. It implements the bounded workflow described here, but is not a broadly generally available service.
Compare the workflow approaches
| Approach | Useful when | Trade-off to verify |
|---|---|---|
| Camera roll, paper and messages | Very low setup overhead | Context, approval and export are fragmented |
| Broad field-service suite | CRM, dispatch and operations must share one platform | Mobile complexity, contract terms and offline depth vary |
| FieldProof founding pilot | A small crew needs a focused evidence-to-approval layer | Limited pilot; not a replacement for accounting or a full CRM |
Selection criteria
- New records can be created and edited while fully disconnected.
- Every item has a visible local, queued, synced, conflicted or rejected state.
- Original evidence and both sides of a sync conflict remain recoverable.
Evidence boundary: the complaint counts come from a defined App Store review window and overlapping deterministic themes. They indicate recurring friction, not market share, causality, satisfaction rate or a promise that every team has the same problem.
Frequently asked questions
Does FieldProof work without internet?
The live founding pilot stores job evidence locally first and exposes a sync queue. Teams should still test their own devices and failure conditions before relying on it operationally.
Is offline mode the same as a cached schedule?
No. A cached schedule is read-only context. Offline work also requires durable creation, editing, receipts, retry and conflict handling.
Is FieldProof generally available?
No. A limited authenticated PWA is live at /app/, but it remains a founding pilot rather than a broadly available service.
An offline field service app should let a technician capture the complete job record without waiting for a network round trip. That includes photos, annotations, equipment readings, checklist answers, materials, customer signatures and the reason a scope changed.
What “offline” needs to protect
New evidence, not just old records
Read-only caching solves only part of the job. A field worker must be able to create, edit and complete work while disconnected. Each action needs a local timestamp and a durable queue.
Original files and context
A photo without its job, step, author and capture time is weak evidence. Offline capture should preserve the original file and attach context before any compression or upload begins.
A visible sync state
“Syncing…” is not enough. The useful unit is the individual item: saved locally, queued, uploaded, changed on another device, rejected or needing attention.
A safer conflict workflow
Two people can update the same job before either reconnects. Silently choosing the latest edit risks losing work. FieldProof’s live pilot is designed to expose conflicts, preserves both versions and asks a responsible person to resolve the difference.
- Commit the technician’s action to local storage.
- Show an immediate receipt on the device.
- Upload in the background when connectivity returns.
- Confirm server acceptance at item level.
- Escalate conflicting or rejected items before the job is invoiced.
Offline is a product promise
It cannot be proved with a demo on office Wi-Fi. The founding pilot is available to test interrupted uploads, low storage, app restarts, duplicate taps and multi-device edits on real jobs. Teams interested in testing those failure modes can open the live pilot.