Using Trackapt on a phone

Trackapt runs in a browser, so a phone or tablet needs nothing installed. Several jobs are genuinely easier on one — a stock count down an aisle, a fill at the pump, a clock-in at a gate.

A few things differ on a small screen. None of them are faults.

Your phone is a barcode scanner

Every screen in the retail module that scans has a camera button beside its scan box. It reads barcodes off the device's own camera.

• On the till and receiving, the camera stays open so you can scan item after item.
• On stock count, adjust stock and move stock, it closes after one read, because the next thing you must do is type a number and the box is behind the camera window.
• Listen rather than look: a high beep means it landed, a lower one means the line needs reading.

Full detail in Scanning with the camera.

The camera needs a secure connection

Browsers will not open a camera on an http:// page at all. If the button is missing, either the device has no camera or the site is not being served securely.

Print is hidden

The print action is not offered on a small screen, because there is rarely a printer attached to one.

PDF, Excel and share all remain — get the PDF and print it from wherever you can. See Taking data away.

Screens built for a desk

A survey, a drillhole, a plan and the designs register all open on a phone, and each says so at the top: the screen works here and was built for a larger one. Nothing is withheld. A plan drawn at the width of a phone and a bench table of eleven columns are read there, not worked; drawing on the plan, the 3D view and estimation wait for a desk.

Set switches before opening the camera

The camera window sits on top of the screen behind it. So on the screens that have a mode switch, set it first:

Screen	Set this first
Till	Refund an item, if you are taking a return
Adjust stock	Gone or Found

The camera window says which mode it is scanning for in its own heading, so you can check without closing it.

Never use a private or incognito window

This is the one that costs real money.

The retail till saves every sale to the device's own storage the moment you press Take payment, before anything is sent to Trackapt. That is what lets a cashier hand over change without waiting for the network.

A private window throws that storage away when it closes, taking any sales that had not yet been sent with it.

The same applies to a browser configured to clear its site data on exit.

Working offline

Trackapt works with no signal. Filing a form and broadcasting a figure both queue on the device and go up on their own once there is a connection — which matters, because readings are taken where the readings are: down a shaft, at a weighbridge, on a haul road, and those are exactly the places without signal.

The retail till works this way, and so do forms and figures, importing a survey pickup, and approving or declining a mine plan.

See Working offline for what queues, how to tell what is still waiting, and the one way a queued write can still be lost.

A device that never comes back

Anything queued on a lost or wiped device — sales, forms, figures — cannot be recovered from anywhere else, because it was never on the server. If a device is going out of action for a while, get its queue to clear first, from anywhere it has a connection. See Working offline.

Signing out

Sign out at the end of a shift on any shared device. Everything you record is recorded as you.