Mobile envelopes and working offline
The Work assignments app module has 'offline capabilities'.
This basically means that app users can continue to update their work's progress on the app while temporarily working offline. To handle 'being offline', the initial data passed on from back-office to mobile device is processed via mobile envelopes. To handle subsequent updates (from device to back-office, or back-office to device), the concept of messages is used.
In a technical sense, this means that a mobile envelope is created in the back-office for each record that must potentially be available offline on a mobile device. This happens as soon as the back-office assigns a work assignment to a field engineer, provided that the corresponding order is of the user-defined type that is configured on a sub web definition. See Making PMFS Live app - Work assignments ready for use for the procedure.
Every envelope that is sent out to a mobile device and eventually returned to the back-office contains specific information that 'maps' the order data onto the correct records in the Planon database. Once the data is processed by the back-office, the envelope and all its data is deleted from the mobile device. Thanks to this mechanism, app users do not have to worry about data synchronization or data loss when working offline.
Mobile envelopes TSI
The app's hidden messaging and any online / offline 'synchronization' issues that might occur can be viewed in the dedicated Mobile envelopes TSI. In this TSI, the mobile envelopes and associated messages are logged. The TSI can be added to the navigation panel of Planon administrators who are responsible for monitoring data synchronization between back-office and field engineers. They also need access to a number of additional TSIs:
• Outbound messages
• Outbound raw messages
• Inbound messages
• Inbound raw messages.
Using these TSIs, the Planon administrator can re-process any failed envelope messages and delete obsolete mobile envelopes and their messages.
 | Good to know: if field engineers (internal tradespeople) have opened a work assignment on the app, while in the meantime the back-office removes or changes the work assignment (for example a different Internal tradesperson), they will receive a warning message. When they follow the warning message, the work assignment will be set to Stopped and removed from the device. |
User accounts
Mobile envelopes will only work for app users with a user account that is also linked to a Person in the Planon database. Additionally, in Accounts, on the User groups > Settings > User settings selection step, the field Enable work assignment 'envelopes'? must be set to Yes for all relevant users (those who are linked to the Work assignments module via their user group).
Business object settings
See Field definer > Settings for the Work assignments business object for the procedure to activate mobile envelopes.
Planned maintenance order restrictions
 | If a mobile envelope contains PPM order data, the number of maintenance activities and the number of checklist items per maintenance activity are checked by the system. If the number of maintenance activities exceeds the limit (100), or the number of checklist items for a single maintenance activity exceeds the limit (100), the mobile envelope cannot be opened and you will receive an error message. |