MobiCloud Site Diary Development

By Mark Collier

The first version of the site diary application has been available for a while now with over 70 commercial users trailing the app and the platform, across multiple sites and devices.

We have been great feedback about the look and ease of use for the application and some brilliant suggestions for improvements and additional features. Development on Site Diary has continued and it has grown from what was initially a fairly simple application to something much more sophisticated.

The latest release sees the following upgrades and new features - in some cases made possible by improvements to the platform which we are also continuing to develop.

Use it from a PC

We have added a Back Office Event Creation Page which allows users to input events directly from a PC. This can be preferable to using a mobile device when in the office. It also makes it easier for a whole site to reap the benefits of Site Diary when not all users have access to it via a mobile device. Feedback shows this can be the case where an employer is unable to provide all staff with mobile devices and individuals opt to use their own personal devices to access the system.  

System Resilience

We have made improvements to the login and inactivity logout behaviour, especially on Internet Explorer. This should improve the experience for users of the back-office solution.

Android Container Improvements

Site Diary was initially released on iOS and the Android version which was recently made available contained some bugs. These were not with the core application thanks to the hybrid HTLM5 development, but with native Android features. The new release addresses issues with screen orientation and improves the data synchronization.

+7 Days Event Retrieval

One indication of the success of the application has been the large number of events that are being recorded per site. This is much higher than originally expected and has lead to performance issues on some sites where data rates are low, due to the amount of data being downloaded. This has been addressed by automatically syncing events from the last 7 days only onto the device. Older events can still be retrieved on-demand from the cloud as required.

Global Weather Support

Another sign of success for Site Diary is the number of trial signups from outside of the UK. Consequently the automatic weather reporting feature has been modified to be able to access weather information from anywhere in the world - with the added benefit of improved accuracy within the UK. The ability to select local units (Celisius/Fahrenheit and miles per hour/metres per second) has also been added.

Work on the Site Diary continues and we hope to give you more updates soon. In the meantime you can still try the app for free by signing up on the MobiCloud website.