Why this matters
Field work happens in basements, crawl spaces, lift shafts and the parts of the county where one bar is optimistic. An app that needs a connection to accept a photo is an app that loses the photo.
What happens when you have no signal
Keep working. What you do is saved on the phone and sent when there is signal again.
That includes adding a contact, creating a job, adding a note, creating and completing tasks, and the ordinary edits on secondary screens.
How it catches up
Three things happen when the connection comes back, and each exists because of a way this goes wrong:
Everything replays in the order you did it. A contact you created offline goes up before the job that references them, so the job still finds its customer.
Work created offline keeps its identity. The phone gives a new record a temporary id and swaps in the real one once the server has it, everywhere it is referenced, including in anything still waiting to be sent.
If one item cannot go yet, the queue waits rather than skipping it. A task that depends on a job that has not synced holds its place instead of being sent out of order and failing.
What you see
Your work appears on the phone immediately, whether or not it has been sent. The list you are looking at is the truth, and syncing is something that happens underneath it rather than something you wait for.
Worth knowing
Signing out clears the app’s local copy, which is deliberate: a shared phone should not carry the last person’s customer list. Sign out at the end of a shared shift, and do not sign out with work still queued.