App for field staff
A worker sees the day’s jobs, walks through them in order, takes photos and closes each one on the spot. With no signal the app keeps working, and what is recorded reaches the server when the network comes back.
- Buildfrom $2,150
- Timeline6–9 weeks
- Supportfrom $210/mo
Who this suits: Work away from a desk: installation, servicing, surveys, where jobs are handed out by voice and in a chat and photos arrive with nothing tying them to an address.
What is in the first version
- the day’s jobs
- checklist and photo report
- offline mode
- dispatcher screen
The figures above are the package this sits on: iOS and Android. Anything past its edges the calculator adds before the work starts, not after.
How the path goes
- 01
The day arrives on the phone
Jobs arrive with an address, contact and time, and everything needed downloads while there is still a network.
- 02
On site, step by step
A checklist, photos before and after, the client’s signature, each step written with the time and coordinates of that moment.
- 03
The signal returns, everything uploads
The queue goes out in order, photos travel separately, and the worker can see what has not gone through yet.
What decides whether this works or annoys people
The job changes while offline
The last write must not simply win: work already done is never discarded, and the disagreement is raised to the dispatcher.
The phone dies before the shift
Coordinates are written on an event rather than continuously, and photos are compressed on the device and wait for Wi-Fi.
Surveillance apps get switched off
The app gives the worker something first, and what the dispatcher can see is named out loud and never quietly extended.
What to measure once it is live
- jobs closed on site rather than in the evening
- reports with the full set of photos
- time from signal returning to data appearing
- calls made only to ask for a status
Why this comes out faster
The shape of this one is known: the states, the edge cases and the things that usually go wrong have been decided before. Nothing here is a template, and the saving is not in your half of the work. It goes into your process, your content and the systems this has to talk to, which is the part nobody can have solved in advance.
A likely stack for this
Picked against the task when we scope it, not decided in advance. This is the shelf it usually comes off.
- The app in the handFlutterSwiftKotlin
- Server and dataNode.jsPostgreSQLPrismaRedisS3
- Dispatcher screen and operationsTypeScriptReactNext.jsDockerGrafana
Price it yourself, right here
Five steps, and you can see the number without leaving a contact. The estimate accounts for the kind of work, what you already have and what it will need inside.
These bills do not come from us
- developer accounts in the App Store and Google Play
- mobile data on the workers’ phones
- photo storage that grows every shift
- maps and address geocoding
Asked before the first call
- A native app or the web?
- Offline and the camera decide it. Where the signal drops and there are dozens of photos a shift, it is an installed app. Where the signal is steady the web is cheaper.
- How do we know a photo is taken on site?
- The photo is taken inside the app rather than picked from the gallery, and the time and coordinates are written with it. That is evidence, not a guarantee.
- Android and iOS at once?
- We look at what people actually carry. If the fleet is one platform, the first version targets it and costs less. The second platform is a line in the estimate rather than a free addition.