Working with no signal

Most of the places you work don't have reception. Mechanical rooms are concrete boxes, and basements are basements. So we built Field on the assumption that you don't have a connection, and treat having one as the bonus.

The whole company is on the phone

The first time you sign in, Field loads your company's field records onto the phone: every customer, site and contact, every unit with its service history and open findings, and the jobs and visits the office has sent. That first load needs a connection, and search tells you when it's still loading. After that the phone keeps itself up to date whenever it has signal.

So you don't have to open a stop in the truck to have it later. You can search for any customer, site, address, unit, make, model, serial or job number in a basement and get an answer, including a site you've never been to. What the phone can't show you is a change the office made after you lost signal, like a stop they just added or a note another tech sent from across town. That arrives the next time the phone reconnects. Visits the office is still drafting never come down at all, because they aren't the plan yet.

Files the office attached to your own stops for the coming week come down ahead of time too. If you open a stop and a file isn't there yet, the stop says "Files not on this phone yet".

Everything you do saves to the phone first

Notes, readings, photos, voice notes, adding a unit that isn't in the system, fixing a serial number that's wrong, answering an open finding, recording that you arrived or left, your hours, your Done for now, finishing the visit and tapping Got it on a change from dispatch. All of it saves on the phone before the app says so, and it's still there after the app closes or the phone dies. There's no offline mode to switch on, because the app works the same way with or without signal.

Voice notes are the one that surprises people. The recording is safe the moment you stop, but turning it into text happens after it reaches the office, so in a basement you'll have the audio and no words yet. That's normal.

If you need to write something down that doesn't belong to a stop yet, use Quick note on Today (Capture on iPhone). Later you choose which stop it belongs to, and that works offline too.

Seeing what hasn't gone yet

Field doesn't have a sync screen, and it mostly keeps quiet about sending. Anything the office hasn't received yet carries a small cloud mark. When you finish a visit it says the finish is saved and goes with that stop's notes and photos, and then "Office has it" once it lands. While you're without signal, Today shows how much is waiting, and if something has been waiting more than a few minutes a "changes waiting" count appears. Tapping it lists what's still on the phone and what each item is waiting for, with Send now to try again straight away.

"Saved on this phone" and "received by the office" are different things, and the app keeps them separate on purpose. The office can't see anything until it's received, so if your manager is building a report off your visit, "Office has it" is what they're waiting for.

When the signal comes back

Field sends on its own, in the order you did things, as soon as it can, and it also tries in the background every so often when the phone allows it. Each item goes up once, so a retry after a dropped connection doesn't hand the office a second copy. Things that depend on something else wait their turn, which is why a finished visit waits until the photos and notes it counts on have landed. A finish also waits while a crewmate is still on the clock there, and the item says who.

If the office can't take something as it is, it shows up in that list as needing attention, says why, and waits for you with a way to try again or remove it. It won't send by itself, and hours waiting like this don't count in your Timesheet. Everything else keeps sending. Nothing is thrown away unless you choose to throw it away. If the office cancelled a visit while you were working it offline, your notes, photos and time still reach the office, which decides whether to put the visit back on the schedule.

What needs a connection

Talking to Bolt needs signal. With no connection, Field says "Bolt needs a connection" and turns off sending to Bolt, while your notes, photos and voice notes carry on saving. So does anything you'd ask Bolt to do, like texting the customer that you're on the way, and so does the very first sign-in on a phone.

Odds and ends

If your sign-in lapses while you're out, Field keeps your work and asks you to sign in again. Your time and notes keep saving on the phone. Sending, Bolt, adding equipment and finishing a visit wait until you sign in, and nothing you saved is lost.

Signing out removes everything on the phone, including work the office hasn't received, and the app warns you with a count before it does it. The same happens if the office removes your access, so don't sign out to fix a sending problem. If you're back on a good connection and the waiting count hasn't moved, call the office and tell them what's on the phone.

Updated October 1, 2026.