Offline mode

Birst Mobile supports browsing dashboards, with full support for filtering, drilling, and using interactive visuals, while the app is not connected to the Internet. To enable this functionality, the dashboards and data are stored in a cache. While syncing and using offline mode is easy for business users, as a dashboard developer you may be interested in the details about caching and offline mode.

Offline mode works like a cache on a web browser. As a user browses, filters, and drills through their dashboards and reports, Birst Mobile caches:

  • The data
  • The queries used to generate the data
  • The state of all report visualizations on the dashboards

When the app goes offline, Birst Mobile can use the cache to generate the same views of the dashboards, with the same fully interactive visuals and filters. If the user did not previously browse a report or set a filter while online, it will not be available offline. If this occurs, a message informs the user that the view is not available offline.

For a best practice, advice for business users is If you want to see it while offline, first browse it while online.

After the app goes back online, users can re-sync their dashboards to pick up the latest data. The Sync buttons at the dashboard, collection, and space levels:

  • Rerun all cached queries
  • Generate updated views of each report and dashboard

Depending on how many views have been cached, the sync operation may take a bit of time. The app shows the last updated time for each dashboard in the collection browser and Offline Manager.