On the water
The crew app works where there’s no signal
The LakeOps crew app works with no cell service. The day’s properties, pieces, pins and access notes load onto the phone before the crew leaves the landing, and every completion, note and clock they record on the water goes up when the phone is back in range. For dock work that isn’t a nice extra — it’s the difference between a real record and a decorative one, because the first time a tap fails for want of bars, the crew stops tapping.
The crew marks their own pieces, as they set them
The hand who sets the dock marks the dock. The hand who sets the lift marks the lift. If whoever’s running the boat has to tap seventeen pieces at the end of the day, he’ll do it from memory in the truck, and by Friday the record is fiction. That’s the record your handoff, your bill and your minutes-per-piece all come out of, so it has to be made at the moment the work happens.
- The crew mark their pieces; closing the job out stays with whoever’s running the boat
- Closing a job prices it and emails the customer, so it’s kept to one pair of hands
- Skip a piece and it asks why — that’s the line you’ll want when the bill is questioned
- Photos of the finished work go on the piece and out with the bill
The day’s on the phone before you leave the landing
Everything the crew needs is on the device before they push off: the properties, every piece, the pins, the access notes, the reference photos. After that they can be gone all day with no bars. Nothing they tap is lost, and nothing lands twice — if the boat comes back into range and the phone sends the same thing again, it still counts once.
- Nothing a crew taps is ever lost. Nothing gets recorded twice.
- Photos are the one thing that needs bars. Everything else records with none.
- The clock keeps running through a dead zone, because on-site minutes are billable
- Work that got marked done stays done
- Bearing and distance to the nearest open work, so a boat that finishes early isn’t guessing
Built for a wet glove on a moving boat
Buttons big enough to hit with a glove on, a bar along the bottom you can reach one-handed, and colors that still read in direct sun. It goes on the phone’s home screen like any other icon — there’s nothing to push out to a crew in April and nothing for a new hand to install on his first morning.
- The access note in front of the crew before they leave the landing
- Reference photos on the way in — where it goes on an install, how it stacks on a removal
- One login for a man who’s at the desk in the morning and on the boat at noon
- Nothing to approve, nothing to update, nothing to explain to a hand who started Tuesday
Questions about this
- Does it really work with no cell service?
- Yes. The day loads onto the phone before the crew leaves, and every completion, clock and note recorded afterward is stored on the device and sent when they’re back in range. Two things need a connection: taking a photo, and — the first time anybody opens a lake — pulling the map imagery down once.
- Is there an app to install from the App Store?
- No. It’s a web app that goes on the phone’s home screen when you want it there. Nothing to get approved, nothing to push out to a crew in April, nothing for a seasonal hand to install on his first morning.
- What if two people mark the same piece?
- The first one stands. Work that got marked done never comes un-done, and a second tap on the same piece doesn’t create a second record or a second charge.
See it with your own shoreline on the screen
Half an hour. A few of your properties loaded, the pins dropped, a season run through it. If it’s not obviously better than what you’re doing now, that’s the answer you’ll get.