The app is where a facilities record either gets kept or quietly stops being true. Everything a CAFM promises depends on somebody standing in front of an asset recording what they found, and if that takes four taps and a signal, it will be done from memory at the end of the day instead, or not at all. This page is about what the app half of facility management software actually has to do: capture in the field, work without a connection, and put what it captured somewhere the office record can use. It is a narrower question than the feature list suggests, and it decides more.
Offline is not a feature, it is the requirement
Plant rooms, roof spaces, basements and risers are exactly where the assets are and exactly where the signal is not. An app that needs a connection to open a work order will produce a record that has a hole in it precisely where the expensive assets live. Test it by turning the phone to flight mode during the trial and completing a full work order: open it, add a photo, change the condition, close it, then reconnect and check that all four survived. Vendors describe this differently and the demo never shows it, so it has to be tested rather than asked about.
What a facility management application has to capture, and in how many taps
An asset lookup by scan or by location, a condition against a fixed scale rather than a text box, a photo, the hours spent, and a status change with a date. Five things. Count the taps for each during the trial with a technician rather than a manager holding the phone, because a technician does this forty times a day and a manager does it twice in a demo. Condition on a fixed scale matters more than it looks: free-text condition is the reason so many asset registers cannot answer what falls due in five years.
What the office does with what facilities management applications capture
The hours and the status changes are what turn into the backlog figure, and the condition captures are what turn into the replacement figure. On the backlog sheet here, 340 open work orders at 2.5 hours each is 850 hours against a three-technician capacity of 90 hours a week while 112.5 hours arrive, so the backlog grows by 22.5 hours every week. That figure only means anything if the hours came off the app rather than out of somebody's estimate, which is the real argument for making capture easy.
Where a facilities management app is not the answer
If the problem is that nobody can say how much of the office is occupied, an app for technicians will not touch it: occupancy comes from sensors, badge data or a desk booking record, and that is a different product. If the problem is that the asset register does not exist yet, the app is the second purchase and the survey is the first. Apps are bought to keep a record current; they are poor at creating one, and a trial that starts with an empty register will tell you nothing useful.
Questions people ask about facility management app
What should a facility management app do offline?
Everything a technician does in a plant room: open a work order, look up the asset, record condition, add a photo, log hours and close it, then sync when the signal comes back. Test it in flight mode during the trial and check all of it survived the reconnect, because this is never shown in a demo and it is where field records are lost.
Is the app the same as the facility management software?
It is the capture half of it. The office record holds assets, spaces and work orders; the app is how the field half of that record stays true. Judge them separately: a strong web product with a weak app produces a register that is accurate on the day it was surveyed and drifts from then on.
Should technicians or managers test facilities management apps?
Technicians, and with a real work order rather than a scripted one. A manager taps through a demo twice; a technician does the same sequence forty times a day and will find the two extra taps that decide whether the record gets kept. Count taps per completed work order and compare products on that number.
Can facility management applications replace the asset survey?
No. An app keeps a register current; it does not create one. If you have no register, the first cost is the survey that populates it, and that is a separate line from the license. Ask for the survey figure explicitly, because a trial against an empty register will feel fine and tell you nothing.