Logging knocks now, syncing later
Knocks logged with no signal go into a queue on the phone and upload themselves in order when the connection returns. The important detail is the timestamp: the record keeps the time you knocked, not the time you reconnected. Without that, a day worked in a dead zone lands on the wrong hours and corrupts every time-of-day pattern you would later read.
The queue
Each logged outcome is written to the phone and replayed to the server in order once there is a connection. There is no sync button, because a sync button is a thing to forget.
Why the timestamp is the whole point
If knocks are stamped at upload time, a full day in a dead zone all lands at the moment you got bars back in the car. Your contact-rate-by-hour then says you make all your contacts at 6:40pm in a car park, which is worse than having no data.
New doors offline
Creating a door normally means asking the server for an identifier. Offline the phone generates one and the server accepts it later, so you can pin an entire street you have never seen with no connection at all.
Common questions
- Do I have to press sync?
- No. The queue uploads itself when a connection returns.
- What time do offline knocks get recorded at?
- The time you knocked, not the time you reconnected. That distinction is what keeps time-of-day analysis usable.
- What if my phone dies before I reconnect?
- The queue is written to storage rather than held in memory, so it survives the app closing. A destroyed or wiped phone is a different matter.
More on working offline
Dead zones, saved maps and field reliability — the wedge, and the thing reps complain about most.