Holy cow, it certainly doesn't feel like 1/12th of 2022 is over, but let us assure you, it is! It's said that the way you spend your first month of a new year pretty much defines the pace and tenor of the next 11 months to come. Which is why we've been working on some much-requested features! Here's what Grid brings to you this very merry February:
New Features
Mobile: Offline Upgrades
We've made some important changes to the way that Grid's mobile app functions offline. Previously, we relied on network data to indicate when mobile internet was available and signal strength was strong enough to enable working online vs offline. While this worked fine in most cases, users who were out in the field (like geologists running soil and rock sampling exercises, for example) were experiencing intermittent fluctuations in signal strength, which meant that the app would keep switching back and forth between online and offline modes.
To remedy this, we've now built in the option for a 'perpetual offline mode' wherein the user can switch to offline mode, conduct their operations and then, when they're in a stable network environment, switch back online to upload all the data that was collected.
This is, of course, super useful for geologists, but also for any user of Grid who operates the mobile app in a less-than-ideal signal strength environment.
Web & Mobile: QR Codes
Grid now allows you to use the new QR Code column to generate QR codes, and the mobile app can generate and read QR codes. This is revolutionary, because many business processes - especially those dealing with physical equipment, packages or materials, can be streamlined to a huge extent.
Want to keep track of valuable equipment at a dig site? Every tool, widget or doohickey can be QR-coded, so that when a team member checks out a tool from a central repository, they can scan the code on the handle and it will be recorded as being released into their custody.
The Grid mobile app will not only successfully scan QR codes generated by Grid, it will also scan any QR code that encodes a JSON object, a string or a URL, feeding the data into a Grid column that you designate when you create your application on Grid.
This means that you can use QR codes that other applications have created as well, not just those generated by Grid. The ways you can use this feature are literally limitless, bound only by your imagination. So how will you use QR codes in your workflow?
Mobile: Draft Mode
If you've ever been interrupted while entering data into the Grid mobile app (maybe you had to navigate away from the data entry screen to look something up, or even just take a call) you'd probably remember that slight stab of irritation when you come back to your task and realize that you need to re-enter all your data.
This next feature is all about alleviating that stab of irritation. Now, when you are midway through entering data on a form and you navigate away from the screen or from the app, when you resume, the app will preserve your partial data and ask you if you want to pick up from where you left off or start afresh. You're welcome!
Dashboard: Day Level Refreshes
We've made an important optimization to the way reports in the dashboard refresh their data. Before we rolled out this change, when you wanted to refresh the data in your dashboard, Grid would refresh all the data you'd ever collected. Which is fine if you've just recently started using Grid, but we have users with hundreds of thousands of rows of data, going back multiple months!
This bottleneck slowed down the entire app and was begging for optimization. So, we've introduced a day-level refresh. Now, you have the option of refreshing just the last 24 hours of data - this means you can refresh your data to see up-to-the-minute changes, as your team enters information into the mobile app, without having to reload data from the very beginning of your interaction with Grid!
As always, we'd love to hear what you think about these features, and if you'd like us to build something special for you, please don't hesitate to email and let us know!
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