FieldTask Tips

Creating a shortcut

You can create a shortcut on the home page of your phone to a specific form. This will work like an app for that form.

  1. Find some space on one of the home pages of your phone. Alternatively go into Apps on the phone and find some space there.

    Image showing space for shortcut

  2. Touch and hold in the space where you want to place the form launcher and select the Widgets button at the bottom of the screen.

    Image showing widgets button

  3. Find the FieldTask widget and select it

  4. A menu will show all the available forms. Select the form that you want to create a shortcut for.

  5. The shortcut will be shown on your screen. You can move it using drag and drop and you can delete it in the same way you can remove any app. That is by doing a press and hold and then dragging the icon to Remove.

Saving Battery Life

  • Turn off wifi and bluetooth * Using the android menu go to settings and then wireless and networks * Unselect wi-fi * Unselect Bluetooth
  • Turn off the GSM network by selecting airplane mode
  • In the Mobile App Settings tab - un check Enable Geofence

Disabling the geofence feature is the only FieldTask specific battery saving method. The others are general techniques applicable to any phone although we can assume that for the phones used for data collection in remote areas where you are concerned about battery life then it will be fine to switch off networks until they are needed. When the geofence feature is enable the phone continuously checks to see if it is within the location specified for a geofence and this will use some batter power.