Hi Jill, A shiver ran down my spine when I read your post. Yep: been there. Part of our Workfront-based ESP for Oil & Gas solution revolves around Health, Safety and Environment (HSE), one key aspect of which is filling in VERY long Custom Data forms for "incident reports". Given the nature of the work (in that it's out in the field), internet connectivity tends to be dodgy, and about 4 years ago we had a very uncomfortable rash of dropped data. We were embarrassed, users were furious, and everyone was frustrated. So, a few lessons learned:
Save early and save often
To that end, minimize (or in my opinion, avoid) required custom data fields that -- in preventing saving early and often -- can lead to frustration and/or bad "I'll fix it later" data decisions (you decide which is worse)
Consider using our "http://store.atappstore.com/product/custom-submit/">OCD (Overlay Custom Data) solution, which is how we ultimately solved our HSE situation, since it works great on a smart phone (see field location, above), allows repeated Save and Continue, and has some fancy logic to detect that the internet is down, warns you, preserves what you've been typing on screen, suggests you keep trying, and worst case, can construct an email of everything you've typed so far so you can send it (e.g. to yourself...once the internet is back...) at least copy paste it back in later. No ones favorite, but beats the alternative.
Regards, Doug P.S. ironically, I lost internet connectivity while typing this in -- laptop battery -- but in a similar fashion, recovered most of what I'd typed after I headed for power... Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand!
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