Mobile FAQ

What can the app do?

The app is for the technician in the field. It shows the work orders you are assigned to and lets you work on them.

• Work Orders list. Two tabs: Scheduled and Completed. Each visit you have on a work order is its own row. Tap the star to pin a work order to the top.
• Work order hub. Open a work order to see its sections: Schedule, Time Cards, Materials, Comments, Photos and Documents, Deliverables, Custom Fields, Workflows, Assets, Signature and Expenses. The sections you see depend on your company's setup and your role.
• Pull to refresh. Pull the Work Orders list down to get the latest from the office. The app sends your changes first, then gets the office's.
• Works with no signal. You can keep working with no signal. Your changes wait on the phone and go up by themselves when the signal comes back.
• Sync Log. Tap the bar at the top of the screen to open it. It has three tabs. Waiting shows changes not sent yet. Sent shows what the phone sent. Received shows what the office changed.
• Photos. Take a photo or pick one from the phone. It uploads in the background.
• Site time. Schedule and Time Cards show times in the site's time zone. The screen says which zone it uses.
• My Badge. Your badge photo, from the picture menu at the top right. The same menu has Settings, Help and Sign Out.
• Face ID. You can lock the app with Face ID or your fingerprint.

How do I get my newest work orders?

Pull down on the Work Orders list. The app sends your changes first. Then it gets all your work orders from the office again.

You do not have to pull down. While the app is open and has a signal, it checks for changes about once a minute. So a change the office makes to your work orders reaches your phone within about a minute. A work order the office just assigned to you arrives the same way.

The app checks only while it is open on your screen. If the app was closed or in the background, open it. It checks for changes at once.

The app does not send you a notification when the office changes a work order.

Which work orders show up on the Work Orders list?

The list shows a rolling window of the work orders you are assigned to.

• Scheduled shows open work orders with a visit scheduled from 30 days ago to 7 days ahead.
• Completed shows work orders completed in the last 30 days.

A work order scheduled further ahead shows up when its date is 7 days away.

A work order the office assigned me is not on my list. Why?

Pull down on the list first. If it is still missing, one of these is the reason:

1. It is scheduled more than 7 days ahead. It shows up when its date is 7 days away.
2. It has no scheduled date. The app lists only scheduled work orders.
3. It was scheduled more than 30 days ago and is still open.
4. The office cancelled it, or closed its project. The app removes these work orders. If you have changes on it that have not sent yet, the phone keeps it until they send.

If none of these fits, ask the office to check that you are assigned to it.

Why did pinning one work order pin several rows?

A work order can have more than one visit scheduled for you. Each visit shows as its own row in the Work Orders list.

When you tap the star on a work order, the app pins every visit of that work order for you, not only the one you opened. All of them move to the top of the list, together.

This makes it easy to find every visit to that work order and see them side by side. Tap the star again to unpin them all.

What does the "On phone" badge on a completed work order mean?

It means the full work order is saved on your phone. You can open it with no signal.

The phone saves every completed work order from the last 30 days automatically, in the background. That is the same 30 days the Completed tab shows. So under normal use, almost every work order on that tab carries the badge.

The badge goes missing in three cases: a work order someone else finished that has not reached your phone yet, a single work order whose download failed, or a phone still catching up after being offline a long time.

If you tap a work order that is not saved on your phone while you have no signal, the app shows this message: "This work order isn't on your phone. Go back and sync again."

How does the app work with no signal?

Keep working as usual. Every change you make is saved on the phone at once.

The bar at the top says "Offline" and counts the changes waiting to send. When the signal comes back, the app sends them by itself, in the order you made them. You do not need to press anything.

You can open any scheduled work order on the phone, and any completed work order from the last 30 days. Photos and files open only if they are already on the phone (see the next question).

The app will not let you sign out while changes are waiting, so no work is lost.

Can I see a work order's photos with no signal?

You can always see the list of photos: names, dates and who took them.

The pictures themselves open with no signal only if they are already on the phone:

• a photo you took on this phone, or
• a photo you already opened, or saw with Show photos turned on, while you had signal.

Any other photo needs a signal. Tap it and the app tells you it can't load it offline. The app keeps up to 500 MB of opened files. You can change this in Settings, under Storage. When it is full, the files you opened longest ago go first.

The office added or changed a document. When does it reach my phone?

A work order's Photos and Documents screen shows the work order's own files. It also shows files the office added to the work order's project, the site, the work order template, and the whole company. A file shows on the phone only when the office ticks both Technician and Show in Work Orders.

When the office adds, changes or removes one of those files, it reaches your phone within about a minute while the app is open. You do not need to refresh.

If the office hides a file (unticks Technician or Show in Work Orders):

• Project and work order template files leave your phone within about a minute. These are usually your instructions, so the phone keeps them current.
• Site and company files stay on your list until something else on the work order changes, or until you pull down on the Work Orders list. If you tap one, it may not open.

The office hides files rarely, so this seldom matters.

If the office replaces a file with a new copy, it removes the old one and adds the new one. Your phone drops the old copy and opens the new one.

If the office turns a photo on the website, your phone shows it the new way round. The small copy in the list changes within about a minute. The full photo downloads again the next time you open it, so you need a signal then.

What can I delete?

The rule for most things is the same: you can delete what you added yourself, for seven days. After that, or for anything someone else added, ask the office. The office can still delete anything.

• Comments. You can edit your own comments any time. You can delete your own within seven days of writing them. You can't change or delete anyone else's.
• Photos and documents. You can delete a file you uploaded yourself, for seven days from when you took or added it. Files that belong to the project or the site can't be deleted from the phone. If a file hasn't finished uploading, the button says Cancel Upload, and it goes from the phone without ever reaching the office.
• Expenses and receipts. You can delete an expense or a receipt you added yourself, for seven days.
• Time cards. You can delete your own time card, and any card you added on the phone for a crewmate. You can't delete a crewmate's card that you didn't add, but you can still correct it. The app asks you to confirm first. A time card that is locked or already invoiced can't be deleted.
• Workflows. You can delete a workflow only if you started it and nobody has moved it past its first step.

When you can't delete something, the app says why: for example "Older than 7 days" or "Someone else uploaded this".

When does the app sign me out?

You sign in once. After that, the app keeps you signed in.

Closing the app does not sign you out. A crash does not sign you out. Restarting your phone does not sign you out.

The app signs you out in only these cases:

1. You tap Sign Out. This signs out this phone only. Any other phone you use stays signed in.
2. You change your password. The app asks you to sign in with the new password, usually within 15 minutes.
3. The office disables or removes your account. The app signs you out within about 15 minutes.
4. You do not open the app for 90 days.

In cases 2, 3 and 4, your work stays on the phone. Work that waits to send stays too. It sends after you sign in again.

What happens to my work when I sign out?

If anything is still waiting to send, the app will not let you sign out. It asks you to send it first, so no work is lost.

When you sign out, your work orders, photos and badge stay on the phone, hidden. Nobody can see them unless they sign in.

• You sign back in. Everything is there again. The "Setting up your phone" screen does not show.
• Someone else signs in on the phone. The phone removes your work orders, photos and badge first. The other person never sees them.
• You sign in with the same username at another company. The phone also removes your work first.
• Someone else signs in while your work is still waiting to send. This can happen when the office ended your session before your work sent. The phone warns them first. It says your waiting work will be deleted if they sign in. If they go on, the phone deletes it. To keep it, sign in again yourself and let it send.

Your company code stays, so you do not have to type it again.

Sign Out warns you if the phone has not saved a check of your password. Then you could not sign in again without a signal. You can cancel and stay signed in. To fix it, sign out and sign in again once while you have a signal.

What happens when I sign in with a signal?

1. You type your password. BigWave accepts it.
2. The first screen opens at once. It does not wait for anything else.
3. The phone then checks for changes in the background. It gets only what changed since the last time. It does not get every work order again.

If the phone holds no work orders, it does not make this check. It shows the "Setting up your phone" screen instead. That screen gets all your work orders. Wait for it to finish.

A few seconds after you sign in, the phone saves a check of your password. This lets you sign in later with no signal. The phone does not save the password itself.

Can I sign in with no signal?

Yes, but only if all of these are true:

• You signed in on this phone before, with a signal. On a new phone, or after you reinstall the app, the first sign-in needs a signal. Anyone else sees: "You need a connection to sign in on this phone the first time."
• The phone reached BigWave in the last 30 days. A sign-in with a signal starts the 30 days again. So does the app's normal contact with BigWave while you use it.
• You have not typed a wrong password five times in a row. After five, you need a signal to sign in. Then the count starts again.

If Face ID or your fingerprint is on in Settings, and you were the last person to use the phone, the phone asks for it first. If not, type your password. The phone checks it against the check it saved when you last typed your password with a signal.

After you sign in with no signal, a line on the Work Orders screen says so. You can work as usual. Your changes wait on the phone.

The phone does not check for changes while it has no signal. When the signal comes back, it sends your changes and checks for changes by itself.

If you signed in with Face ID, the phone asks for your password once when the signal comes back. Tap the line on the Work Orders screen and type it. Your changes send after that.

If you changed your password on the web, or the office disabled your account, the phone does not know until it reaches BigWave. Until then, your old password still works with no signal. The phone then asks for the new password, or tells you the account is disabled.