Maintenance Connection Everywhere, offline mobile saves the day when tower blown up or How Maintenance Connection Everywhere can help protect you from and in disasters, to be able to function, and work towards bringing things back to normal quicker.

This is something we never would have thought of writing if it hadn't happened to and been reported to us by one of our customers.

It did remind us that we have had customers giving similar reports during power outages (WiFi doesn't work) and severe storms.

While we have believed, since 2003 when we wrote our first offline CMMS tool, that offline and mobile are highly valuable tools for almost every technician, the story we were told today enforced addition reasons why you should be using Maintenance Connection Everywhere, the worlds only truly offline/online Work order, Asset and Inventory/Inventory count mobile application with nearly 20 years experience optimizing your offline experience.

An unexpected value with the Maintenance Connection Everywhere (MCe) offline mobile technician family of products

We had an unusual correspondence with one of our customers today (March 2021)

We were sent an email explaining that a few days ago someone had blown up, with a grenade it is believed, the communications tower that they use to connect to the internet from their phone and their computer.

They had both software that requires a connection to the server (so called "online" software) and our MCe WO Technician module that allows them to do most of their work offline.

They reported with enthusiasm that they were able to continue working offline to get their work orders done, and could continue to do so without even once connecting to the server for days.

So how can you work when someone blows up your local WiFi and/or cell phone

If you already have sync'd and received the work orders you need to do your job - simple, you just go and do your job.

Then, when you need to save the data back to the server, or get more work orders, if you have any connectivity at all, even if very flakey, you sync and get the new work - it may take longer than usual if your connection is bad, but you can still do it.

If you are able to travel, say to your local coffee shop, for a break, you go to one that is far enough away that it is using a different communication tower, and you do your sync'ing there at your normal high speeds, then you can go back into the 'dark' zone to continue your work.

As long as you have enough work, and you are desperate to get your data back to the server and you have power to charge your device - all available in this case, you can be away from communication for weeks if needed with the MCe work order technician modules.

The benefits

• The most obvious one to you is - while the rest of the world grinds to a halt, you can continue to get your work done.
• If there is some communication available, you can sync periodically without using up a lot of the very valuable bandwidth.
• You won't be 'stealing' the bandwidth that the emergency workers need, especially if you simply drive out every day or several days to get connection.

Situations similar to this:

This one is likely and hopefully an isolated case, although sadly, in 2020 and 2021 around the world it has been happening more and more, some due to people who are worried about conspiracy theories around 5G. But there are similar ones all the time.

• An equipment failure on your WiFi provider
• A severe storm that knocks out communications.
• A terrorist attack. I'm not sure that technically, people blowing up cell towers because of a fear of 5G qualifies as a 'terrorist' attack, but the effects are the same.

How to be prepared

• First you need the right software. Maintenance Connection Everywhere has been providing our solution since 2003, making us the world leader and still the best software money can buy for this. A quick look at any of the other mobile, and what 'others' call 'offline' will show you what nearly 20 years of experience can do.
• You need software that can download your work for the day or the week, and allow you to work on it without ever having a connection to the internet until you want to either get more work or sync your changes back to the server.
• You need to ideally always keep a couple days of work, if this fits your environment, on your device.
• You need to have your cell phone or device charged, so if the power also goes out, you have the power you need. Many people keep a backup power-brick, devices that are basically a big battery often with a USB port, used to charge phones etc..,

Please note: In a bad power outage, do NOT use one phone to charge another via things like Qi (wireless charging) except in dire emergencies. If you have 2 similar phones, and you charge one from the other, you are only going to get about a 12 to 15% efficiency. This means, if you have one phone with 0% power, and another with 100%. If you charge the first with the second, you will at most have your first phone, the one you are charging, up to 15% when the phone that is doing the charging drops down to zero! If you have even a thin case on the one you are charging, or a cover on the one doing the charging, it is even worse, you may get as low as 2% benefit. Qi is fine for convenience, it looks really cool in a TV commercial (charging one phone from another) but in most cases it is terrible to use for charging one phone from another.

Be respectful of emergency workers. If you are an emergency worker - you may need your Maintenance Connection Everywhere for getting and sending wo status reports, but otherwise, be aware when there are massive communications failures, you should try to let emergency workers have all the bandwidth they need to try to fix the problem. If you can, just keep working on your work, and wait until the emergency is over to sync your changes back to the server, or if you can, drive to a zone outside of the problem to sync your changes and get new work orders.

Be aware that 'mobile' does NOT mean you can work without a connection to the internet. Many solutions including the one most closely compared to Maintenance Connection Everywhere, will lose your data if you lose a connection and try to keep using the product, and we have seen and had reports from other unrelated CMMS products that what the manufacturer calls 'offline mobile' is little more than a page or two that you can enter and then wait until you have a connection.

Test your offline capabilities (turn on airplane mode for example) before you need it in an emergency. You'll be happy to see what Maintenance Connection Everywhere is going to do for you. It will also let you see where you may want to make sure you have the right data downloaded to your device so that you know you can do what YOU want to do in an emergency.

Test the 'flakey' internet capabilities. Many customers have been very disappointed to find out that most mobile software, not just CMMS, does not protect you from Flakey Internet like Maintenance Connection Everywhere does. Imagine doing 10 minutes work, hitting the submit button, and getting an error that essentially tells you "You did not have internet at the instant you hit submit, and as a result you lost all the work you did for the last 10 minutes."

It is disappointing that so many (all other) companies sell so called 'mobile' software that doesn't let you really work offline. But even worse ...

We may be biased (several of our largest customers say no, we are simply correct and so far no customer has told us we are wrong!), we are appalled that companies sell so called 'mobile' software that can't handle internet problems and lose your data when you go into an elevator, or boiler room, or just hit submit at the wrong instant walking from your office to the boardroom.

Maintenance Connection Everywhere, the only REAL Mobile CMMS software, since 2003.