Your day in Field

Most techs spend the first morning with a new app poking at it in the truck before the first stop, so here is what you'll find when you do. iPhone and Android look different, because we built each one the way its phone works, but they show the same things and do the same things. Where this page says Today or stop, both phones have it.

Today is what the office has sent

Today is your assigned route, with the next useful thing to do sitting where you can reach it. On a normal morning that's your first stop. Later in the day it might be a handoff you haven't given yet, or work that's still on the phone and hasn't reached the office.

What's on Today is what the office has actually sent you. Managers work up the day in Office, move stops around and save drafts while they think, and none of that reaches your phone until they publish it, so a stop on your route is one the office has committed to. The change lands in the app the next time the phone has a connection, which is why a schedule change can't reach you while you're in a basement, and Field asks you to acknowledge it when it does. The dispatch page covers what happens if you don't.

Not every stop has a time. Some work has an appointment, some has an arrival window, some is anytime that day, and some is unscheduled, and Field keeps all four kinds on the route because a flexible job shouldn't disappear just because nobody attached a clock to it.

Opening a stop

Open a stop and you get the customer, the work order, the site with its access instructions, and the units at that site. Each unit carries its recent history, any open findings, and the recent service notes. It's the recent part of the building's story rather than every visit since the unit went on the roof, so if you need something older, ask the office, or ask Bolt while you still have signal.

The phone gets this ready ahead of time. When Field has a connection it prepares today and the days ahead of published work, with the site, units, findings and service notes for each stop, so it's all there when you open a stop in a mechanical room with no bars. Working with no signal has its own page; the short version is that everything you do saves to the phone first and goes up on its own once you're back in range.

Arriving, your own time, and leaving

When you get there, record your arrival on the stop and start your time. That timer is yours, not the crew's, and your hours are built from it later. Notes, readings, photos and voice notes go against a unit as you work, and the capture page walks through all of that. When you leave, record your departure. Arrival and departure are recorded separately from your hours, because being on site and being on the clock aren't always the same thing.

The handoff is about your part

Before you're done with your part of a visit, you give a handoff. It says where you stand and what happens next: my assigned work is done, someone needs to come back, or someone else is carrying on. It covers your part only, which matters on a crew job, since the visit as a whole isn't finished until the shop says so. The finishing page covers how a visit gets completed.

If you do more work after your last handoff, whether that's starting your timer again or capturing something new on the stop, Field reminds you that it needs a fresh one. The reminder is there so the office knows where things stand; it isn't checking whether your evidence is complete or holding up your hours. Saying someone needs to come back holds until you record new activity on that visit, and while your timer is running the app just shows you as working and waits until you stop before it asks.

On a crew stop you can also see where the others stand: still working, handed off, or flagged that someone needs to come back. If it says unknown, the app doesn't know yet, and it won't treat that as finished.

Bolt, by voice or typing

Bolt is in Field the whole day, by voice or by typing, and a voice conversation you've already started keeps going with the phone locked in your pocket. A live conversation needs a connection, so in a basement Field tells you that and a typed message just sits there unsent until you're back in range. If you'd rather type than talk, Bolt may still speak its answer back, but it won't ask for the microphone. Your conversation history stays on the phone either way.

Updated September 21, 2026.