For a lot of people in a variety of different industries, work doesn’t always happen in an office. For scientists and researchers, work might take place in the middle of a desert. For people in a service job such as plumbing or home computer repair, work could take place in any number of different residences. Even for people in more traditional 9-to-5 jobs, events like trade shows can take people into unfamiliar surroundings. If you’re using a SaaS solution to collect information, those unfamiliar surroundings can put you in a difficult situation if you’re relying on WiFi. With FormAssembly’s mobile app for iOS devices, you can collect data offline and sync it to your account when you connect to secure WiFi again. That’s all there is to it. Trying to think of ways to put this to use in your organization? Here are five ideas we came up with. See if one of them strikes a familiar chord!
1. Input Timesheet Data Remotely
Plenty of organizations use paper timesheets, but that doesn’t mean it’s the most efficient way to track hours. To start with, re-entering data into a computer is time-consuming and no one’s favorite task. Second, paper can be hard to keep track of. If employees working outside of an office forget to bring timesheet forms, they might forget to note their hours at all, resulting in incorrectly entered hours later. Web forms, filled out on a computer or through the FormAssembly mobile app can help you solve the paper issue and provide a way to enter your work hours without a WiFi connection.
2. Capture Remote Research Information
Whether you’re a student researcher or a career scientist, whether you’re collecting data on the top of the mountain or in the middle of a city, you might not always have a reliable internet connection. That’s where the ability to collect data offline, edit it as needed, and sync it to your main account, can really come in handy.
3. Capture On-Site Work Notes
Like we mentioned above, plumbers and home computer repair people are just two examples of professionals whose jobs take them to multiple different locations. Collecting notes through web forms on the house visits that these people make can be helpful and sometimes necessary to keep records organized and provide great customer service.
4. Gather Leads at a Trade Show*
WiFi isn’t always free at conferences and trade shows, but it can be hard to achieve your goals without it, especially if you’re attempting to manage a booth and collect leads for your business. This is another situation where offline data collection can be useful. Create a simple lead capture form, and allow visitors to your booth to input their information offline or online through that form. No need to collect and keep track of business cards, and no need to worry about overpaying for WiFi.
5. Sign-up Students at College Fairs*
Just to show how many different industries offline data collection can be helpful for, we’ll look at one more: higher education. Similar to the trade show example above, higher education professionals attending college fairs might not have great WiFi access, or they simply might not want to deal with collecting information by paper forms. Instead, the answer can be sleek web forms that allow for offline data collection. Prospective students may also appreciate the use of technology as well.
*It is not currently possible to automatically reset a form on submission, but we are developing a kiosk mode for the mobile app that will make this possible. Until then, you can press the back button and reselect the form to collect multiple responses on the mobile app.
These are just a few simple examples of how you might use the mobile app no matter what industry you’re in. How could you use or modify one of these for your organization? Let us know in the comments below, then learn more about the mobile app.
