"Did You Know?" Series, Episode 4: Beacon

Once upon a time, there lived an application named Mobile. What is Mobile, you ask? It was an application developed to be used offline in the field. Setting up and configuring Mobile was a daunting task that required much time and effort... over time, Mobile got some work done and re-emerged as Beacon. So... if you see references to Mobile in Spira, it's really referring to Beacon!

What is beacon?

Beacon is a Microsoft based application that can be utilized offline in the field. It can only be run on a Microsoft Windows platform, e.g., a laptop or a Microsoft Surface tablet. Jobs and/or estimate tickets are dispatched to Beacon devices; depending on the business process, jobs can be initiated and submitted from Beacon as well. Field tickets are created and submitted from Beacon.

Why would a company use beacon instead of spira fi?

Similarly, Spira FI is an application that can be used offline; but it is limited in the way that only allows the creation and submission of simple or reference type tickets. For customers that leverage tour sheets or LEM (labor, equipment and materials) tickets, and need offline capability for field capture, Beacon is the answer. There is no limitation on the types of tickets in Beacon. Forms, reports, signatures are also all features within Beacon.

What is the UI (User interface) like?

The UI is similar to Spira Web, except that it is a thick client or application installed on the machine rather than being web-based. Also, only features required by the field are available in Beacon—tickets, forms, reports, signatures. A unique feature of Beacon is its layout feature. Beacon gives the user the ability to customize the layout by ticket type; tabs can be re-ordered and docked as panes so that data can be grouped and viewed as desired by the user. The user is empowered to create and save their own layouts to make their data capture process as efficient as possible.

what are some of the limitations?

The main limitation is that it is only compatible with Microsoft. Beacon is not a "big button" type of application—that is Spira FI. When there is a decent amount of data capture required by the field, Beacon may be a better option than Spira FI.