Does Foreman work on old phones and with patchy signal?

Foreman runs in the phone's web browser, so there's nothing to install and it works on whatever iPhone or Android your crew already carry. It does need a connection to send anything. There's no offline mode: a diary entry, form or induction only saves once it reaches Foreman, so with no signal at all you'll need to wait and send it later.

Foreman does a few things to cope with weak signal and older phones, though, and a bad-coverage site is workable if you know where the gaps are.

Nothing to install

Crew open Foreman at app.foremanapp.com.au in Chrome, Safari or whichever browser their phone uses, and log in with the email and password you gave them. There's no App Store or Play Store download and no updates to manage. Once logged in they stay logged in through normal weekly use, so they aren't typing a password every morning.

Worth doing on day one: get them to add the page to their home screen from the browser menu, so Foreman is one tap away.

What Foreman does on a weak connection

Photos are shrunk before they upload. A full-size photo from a modern phone camera can be several megabytes. Foreman shrinks each photo on the phone first, so there's far less to send and the browser tab is less likely to crash on an older phone.

Photo uploads retry on their own. If the signal drops for a moment, Foreman tries the upload again before it gives up. If it still fails, the photo shows an error and you can retake it.

Submit waits for the photos. The Submit entry button stays greyed out until every photo has finished uploading, so a quick tap can't send an entry with a photo missing.

A half-finished diary entry comes back. Older Androids often close a browser tab in the background while the camera is open. If that happens, or the page reloads, the diary form brings back the date, project, hours, description and any photos that had finished uploading when the tab reopens, with the message "Restored an entry you hadn't sent yet." A photo that was still being taken or uploading will need retaking, and a draft older than 24 hours is dropped. Tap Discard on the message if you'd rather start again.

No signal doesn't block the location check. If the phone can't get a location fix when you submit, the entry still saves and is marked as missing a location.

What it doesn't do

• It doesn't queue things to send later. Tap submit with no connection and it won't go through. Nothing waits in the background for signal to come back.
• Forms don't keep a draft. Leave a form page before it's submitted and what you typed is gone. Stay on the page until you've got signal and it's sent.
• The photo upload screen doesn't keep a draft either. Photos added through Upload photo are lost if the tab gets closed before you save. The diary form is the safer place to add photos on a bad connection.
• Visitors need signal to do the induction. The QR code opens a web page, so the person scanning it needs mobile data at the gate.

Working a site with bad coverage

1. Fill it in, then find signal. For a diary entry, fill it in where you are. If the submit fails, the entry stays on screen, so walk to where you get a bar or two and tap Submit entry again.
2. Log at the end of the day. A diary entry can be dated for an earlier day, so it's fine to log it from the ute, the car park or home that evening.
3. Use site Wi-Fi if there is one. Foreman doesn't care whether it's Wi-Fi or mobile data.
4. Put the QR poster where there's coverage. If the gate is a dead spot, put the site posters at the nearest point on the way in from the gate where visitors can actually load the page.
5. Let the Site Manager catch up missed days. If someone couldn't log a day at all (flat phone, no signal), their Site Manager or an Admin can log it for them. The entry says who logged it for whom. See how to log hours for a crew member.

If something doesn't look right

• The camera won't open. Check the phone's settings allow the browser to use the camera, then try again. You can still submit a diary entry without photos.
• A photo shows an error. Remove it and take it again once you have a better signal.
• The page looks broken or won't load. Make sure the phone's browser is up to date, then reload the page.

For more on how entries are dated and stamped, see Foreman's site diary or the guide on how to keep a site diary.