If you’re choosing property inspection software, ask a simple question:
What happens when I lose my connection?
It is easy to overlook when you’re testing software in an office with a good internet connection. It matters rather more when you’re standing in a property and your phone suddenly has no signal.
Why offline working matters
Mobile coverage in the UK is good, but good coverage does not mean coverage everywhere.
The headline figures from mobile providers describe the areas or population they cover. They don’t mean that every part of the country has a usable signal.
Different networks have different masts and coverage. Signal can also vary within a town, inside a particular building or even from one room to another.
Go into a basement and the signal can disappear.
Walk around a large building and it can come and go.
Visit a rural property and you may have nothing at all.
We’ve experienced this ourselves in Great Yarmouth and Gorleston. We’ve also used BrightChecker in a property where we moved in and out of connectivity as we moved around the building.
That is why the useful question isn’t simply:
“Does your software work offline?”
The better question is:
“What actually happens to my inspection when the connection disappears?”
What good offline inspection software should do
A proper offline system should let you get the job ready before you arrive, carry out the inspection without a connection and synchronise the information when connectivity returns.
You shouldn’t have to stand outside waiting for a signal before you can start.
You also shouldn’t have to worry that everything you’ve just entered will disappear because the connection dropped.
That’s the approach we’ve taken with BrightChecker.
Get the inspection onto the device before you start
When you log into BrightChecker, your assigned surveys are available to you.
When you’re ready to carry out an inspection, you can download the survey to the device.
Depending on how the template has been configured, that can include the inspection questions and prompts, access information, special instructions and previous survey information for the property.
For example, a client might want you to pay particular attention to a particular material or area of the property. That information can be available before you start.
Once the survey has been downloaded, you don’t need a continuous connection to the main server to work through it.
What happens when the connection disappears?
BrightChecker keeps the survey information on the device while you’re working and puts information that needs to reach the server into a queue.
If there’s a connection, the information can be sent.
If there isn’t, it waits.
The system keeps trying to send it as connectivity becomes available.
You can therefore carry on with the inspection rather than stopping every time the connection disappears.
When you move somewhere with a signal again, the queued information can start synchronising.
It doesn’t wait until the end
This is an important part of the design.
You could collect an entire inspection offline and then try to upload everything as one large job at the end.
That creates a problem with larger inspections. Hundreds of photographs, videos, answers and other pieces of information can take long enough to send that the connection or server times out before everything has been transferred.
We’ve experienced that problem ourselves with much earlier versions of the system.
So BrightChecker doesn’t depend on one huge upload at the end.
Information is added to the queue as you work. Where connectivity is available, the queue can drain during the inspection.
When you finish, the system checks what is still waiting and continues sending it before the submission is completed.
You can see what has synchronised
You shouldn’t have to guess whether your information has reached the server.
BrightChecker gives you visual indications of synchronisation.
Photographs and video have status information showing whether the media has been received.
GPS and timestamp information have their own status indicators.
Text responses and scale responses also show their synchronisation state.
The indicators change as information moves through the process.
A green indication means the information has synchronised.
An amber indication means it is waiting in the queue.
The important point is that waiting to synchronise is not the same as losing the information.
What if you have no signal for the whole inspection?
Carry on.
If the property has no usable connection, the survey information remains on the device and waits in the queue.
You might regain connectivity when you leave the property, get back to the vehicle or reach another part of the area.
The queued information can then be sent.
The inspection itself doesn’t have to stop because the mobile network has disappeared.
That’s particularly important for properties in rural areas, large buildings, basements and other locations where connectivity is unpredictable.
Required questions shouldn’t become a trap
There is another part of the submission process worth considering when you compare inspection software.
You may want some questions to have a response before the survey is submitted.
BrightChecker can mark questions as required.
If you try to submit without answering one, the system warns you and takes you to the first missing response. You can select it and go straight to that part of the survey.
But you can still choose to submit.
That’s deliberate.
There are situations where a surveyor cannot provide an answer. Perhaps an area couldn’t be accessed, or the required information simply wasn’t available.
The software can remind you without taking away your ability to decide what happens next.
What should you ask when comparing inspection software?
“Works offline” is too vague.
Ask the supplier:
Can I download the complete inspection before I arrive?
You need to know what information is available on the device without a connection.
What happens to photographs and video when I’m offline?
Media can represent a large proportion of an inspection, so this matters.
Does information synchronise as I work, or does everything wait until the end?
A single large upload creates a very different experience from a queue that can synchronise throughout the inspection.
Can I see what has synchronised?
Useful status information removes a lot of uncertainty.
What happens if I lose the connection halfway through?
This is the real-world test.
What happens when the connection comes back?
A good system should be able to continue without requiring you to redo the work.
What happens with a large inspection?
A system that works with a small test survey isn’t necessarily going to behave the same way with hundreds of photographs and videos.
Test it somewhere the signal doesn’t work
This is probably the best test of all.
Don’t test offline working by switching your phone to airplane mode for thirty seconds in the office.
Take the software to a real property.
Download the inspection first.
Turn off the connection.
Carry out part of the inspection.
Take photographs.
Add notes.
Answer different types of question.
Then restore the connection and watch what happens.
If you’re choosing software for a team, let the people who actually carry out inspections test it. They’ll find problems that aren’t obvious from a sales demonstration.
Offline isn’t just a feature
For an inspection business, connectivity is something you have to work around.
The property isn’t going to move because your mobile signal has disappeared.
A basement will still be a basement.
A rural property will still be a rural property.
A large building can still have dead spots.
Your inspection software needs to cope with the environment in which you actually work.
That’s why we built BrightChecker’s offline system around local storage, queued synchronisation and visible sync status.
Don’t just ask whether inspection software works offline. Ask how it works offline.
Inspect where the property is, not where the signal is.
Flexibility by Design.
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