Working Without Internet
Still under test
Working offline is a new feature and is still being tested. Use it, but check what you saved: once the connection is back, open Unsent work and make sure every patient, appointment, payment and prescription you recorded during the outage has reached the clinic system. Tell us about anything that looks wrong.
The line goes down for five minutes. A patient is standing at the desk. Before, that meant paper — and re-typing everything afterwards, if anyone remembered.
Now the clinic system keeps going. It notices the connection is gone, says so, and lets you carry on working. Everything you do is kept on the computer or phone you are working on, and it is sent to the clinic system by itself the moment the internet comes back.
This needs the application
Working offline is available in the desktop application and the mobile application only — not in an ordinary browser.
The reason is where the work is kept. The applications keep it in a file of their own on the machine, where nothing else can reach it. A browser can only keep it among the browsing data, and one "clear browsing data" — a thing staff and IT do routinely, with no warning — takes a whole morning's work with it. We would rather tell you plainly than promise something the browser cannot keep.
In a browser the clinic system works exactly as it always has while you have a connection; when the line drops it says so and asks you to use the application.
Where to Find It
Click an address to open that screen on your own clinic. The first click asks which clinic you are, then remembers it.
| Screen | Address |
|---|---|
| Unsent work | /sync |
What You See When the Line Drops
A mark appears in the top bar. It is the one place to look, and it says one of four things:
| The bar says | It means |
|---|---|
| No internet | The connection is gone. You can keep working. |
| N waiting to be sent | That many things you did are still on this device. |
| Sending… | The connection is back and the clinic system is receiving them. |
| N need attention | Something could not be saved. Click it. |
When there is nothing to say — you are online and everything has been sent — nothing is drawn at all.
What Keeps Working
The screens the clinic runs on, minute to minute:
- Today's appointments and the waiting queue, exactly as they were when the line dropped
- The patients you have opened recently — their file, their last visits, their prescriptions
- Registering a new patient
- Booking, moving and cancelling a visit
- Checking a patient in and arranging the queue
- Recording the visit and its prescription
- Taking a payment
Anything else — reports, settings, the accounts, staff and payroll — needs the internet, and says so plainly instead of failing.
Photos and files wait
While the internet is down you cannot attach a photo, a scan or a payment receipt. Save the rest now; add the file when the connection is back.
The "Not Sent" Mark
Anything you record during an outage carries a mark until the clinic system has it. You will see it on the patient in the list, on the visit on today's board, on the payment in the record — everywhere that record appears.
A marked record is real work, not a draft. It is on this device, it will be sent, and nobody has to re-type it. What it does not have yet is a number.
Numbers come from the clinic system, not from your device
File numbers, receipt numbers and invoice numbers are issued when the record reaches the clinic system — never by the computer at the desk. Two receptionists working offline would otherwise both hand out receipt 412.
So a prescription printed during an outage carries no number, and says so on the paper.
When the Internet Comes Back
Nothing to press. The moment the connection returns — or the moment you come back to the tab on a phone — everything queued is sent, in the order you did it, and each mark disappears as the clinic system confirms it.
Sending the same thing twice cannot create it twice. If the line dies halfway through, whatever was already sent is not sent again.
When Something Could Not Be Saved
Some things can only be checked when the work reaches the clinic system, because your device could not know about them. The bar turns red and the Unsent work screen says which, and why:
| What it says | What happened | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| You are no longer allowed to do this | Your permissions were changed while you were offline | Ask whoever manages staff accounts |
| The record no longer exists | Somebody deleted the patient or the visit meanwhile | Nothing to recover — record it again if it still applies |
| Your monthly allowance is used up | The clinic hit its plan's patient or visit limit while you were away | See Plans and the Monthly Allowance |
| The clinic system refused this | A field was not accepted | Read the reason, then record it again correctly |
| Something went wrong on the server | A temporary problem | Press Try again |
Nothing is thrown away on its own. A row stays on that screen until you deal with it — retry it, or discard it deliberately.
When Two People Changed the Same Thing
You edit a patient's phone number while offline. Meanwhile a colleague at the desk edits the same patient. When your work is sent, the clinic system does not choose between you — it stops and asks.
The Unsent work screen shows both versions side by side, field by field: yours and the one on the server. You pick which is right.
Until you pick, nothing about that patient moves — later changes you made to the same record wait behind your decision. Every other patient carries on being sent normally.
Two Rules Worth Knowing
Signing out empties the device. Every patient page kept for offline reading goes with the session — which is why a shared computer at reception is safe to sign out of. If you have work that has not been sent, you are warned first and asked to confirm, because signing out throws it away.
A device that has been offline too long stops taking new work. After a day with no contact with the clinic system, what is on the device is yesterday's picture of the clinic, and booking against it would put a visit into a diary nobody recognises. You can still read everything held on the device; you cannot record anything new until it reconnects.
On a Phone
Everything above works in the mobile application, and only there — the phone's browser is a browser like any other.
Inside the application, work recorded with no signal survives the app being closed, the phone running out of battery, and the phone being restarted. It is still there, still waiting to be sent, the next time you open the app on that phone.
Money Taken With No Line, and Your Shift
A payment collected while the line is down is queued like any other work — and it remembers which drawer it went into. That matters more than it sounds: by the time it reaches the clinic system, your shift may already be counted and closed, and filing yesterday's cash in today's drawer would leave one count short and the other over.
So the payment rejoins the shift it was taken in, as long as that shift is still open when the work syncs.
If the shift was already closed, the payment is still recorded — the money was collected — but it belongs to no shift, and the sync screen says so, naming the shift and the amount. Reconcile it by hand: the drawer it was taken in was short by exactly that amount at its close.
Sync before you close
The habit worth building is: reconnect, let the queue empty, then count and close. A shift closed with work still queued is a shift that will disagree with itself.
Opening a shift needs the line. The button is hidden while you are offline — it is not a queueable action, and a drawer that exists only on one device is not a control.