Running a Check Without Signal

Checking cattle happens where signal is worst, so Checks is built to work without it. The roster is stored on your device and every tap is saved locally before anything is sent — the screen responds exactly the same whether or not you have bars.

Before You Ride Out

Open the check once while you still have signal. That downloads two things onto the device:

• The check’s roster — every animal you are looking for, with all of its tags.
• A list of your animals, so a stray can be searched for and added later with no connection.

After that the check screen works from the device, even after a reload, until you reconnect.

What the Banners Mean

No banner at all means everything is saved on the server.

What Works Offline

• Marking animals found, and undoing a tap.
• Filtering, searching and re-ordering the roster.
• Adding an animal that isn’t on the list.
• Finishing the check.

Everything you do is queued in order, because a tap and the undo that follows it are only correct in sequence.

How Syncing Works

When the device comes back online the queue replays on its own, oldest change first. You can also force it with Sync now.

• Losing signal again halts the sync with everything still queued — nothing is lost, it carries on next time.
• A change the server refuses is dropped rather than retried forever, which would wedge every later change behind it.
• A check finished offline shows as finished immediately and reaches the server when you reconnect. It only starts counting toward Last Seen once it has synced.

Things to Know

• Start the check with signal. Opening a check for the first time in a dead spot has nothing to work from — there is no roster on the device yet.
• The stray search needs one connection first. If you see “Animal list hasn’t been downloaded yet”, reconnect once and it will be there from then on.
• The device holds the queue. Finish the sync from the same phone or tablet you rode with — queued taps don’t follow you to another device.
• Reconnect before you clear your browser data. Clearing site data on the device discards anything still waiting to sync.

Tips

• Watch the waiting count, not the bars. As long as the count is going down, everything you tapped is landing.
• Don’t re-tap an animal because the screen looked slow. The tap is already saved locally; a second confirmed tap undoes it.