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When the wifi drops

Restaurant wifi goes down mid-service. Thezi's counter screen is built for it: with the line down, the page still opens and still shows tonight's diary. Here is exactly what works, what does not, and how to set the device up.

What still works

Open the dashboard on the device you ran service from and you get:

Tonight's bookings — who, what time, how many, which table, their notes and allergies.
The floor plan, coloured as it was the last time the line was up.
The waitlist — who was standing at the door when the line was last up.
An amber strip across the top: Offline · showing bookings as of 19:24. Still trying. The time is when the diary was last fetched, so you know how fresh it is.

The page keeps trying every minute. When the wifi comes back it refreshes itself within a minute and the strip disappears. Nothing to reload, nothing to press.

The diary you see is a copy kept on the device from the last time it was online. It only holds today and tomorrow, and it is wiped when you sign out — so a device that has been sitting in a drawer since last week has nothing to show, and nobody signing in after you sees your diary.

Three screens are covered, and only three: Service, Floor plan and the waitlist. Bookings works too, but only for today and tomorrow — step back to last Tuesday with the arrows and you get Could not load bookings, because last Tuesday is not kept on the device. The setup screens behind the settings icon — services and hours, tables, no-show cover, your guest list, your website, Google, API keys — all need the line, and say so when they cannot reach us. None of that is service-time work, which is why the copy does not cover it.

What does not work offline, and why

Adding, moving or cancelling a booking need the internet. Add a booking, Move and Cancel all go grey with the reason underneath — Needs the internet — the table has to be checked as free — rather than letting you fill a form in and failing at the end.

This is deliberate, not a gap we are getting to. The one promise a booking system has to keep is that two parties never get the same table. Thezi keeps it by checking every booking against a single, live copy of your diary before it says yes. A device with no connection cannot do that check — it would be promising a table nobody has confirmed is free, and you would find out when both parties are standing in front of you. "Save it and send it later" has the same problem; it just moves the collision to when the line comes back.

Adding to the waitlist also needs the line, but for a different reason — and it is the one we expect to change. A party on the waitlist holds no table, so there is nothing to collide with; it is simply not built yet. You can read the list offline, just not add to it.

So what do I do when the phone rings and the line is down?

Take the details on paper, or on the phone in your pocket over 4G. Add the booking the moment the line is back — Add a booking shows you what is genuinely free, which is the point.

The card machine and the till have the same rule, and every venue already carries the fallback: a phone on mobile data. The dashboard works on it exactly as it does on the iPad.

Set the device up so it copes

Add the dashboard to the home screen. It opens full-screen like an app, without Safari's bars, and the device keeps its copy of the diary more reliably.

iPad or iPhone: open thezi.app/admin in Safari, sign in, tap the Share button (the square with an arrow), then Add to Home Screen, then Add.
Android tablet or phone: open it in Chrome, sign in, tap the ⋮ menu, then Add to Home screen (or Install app).

Stay signed in on the counter device. Signing out wipes the offline copy, which is right for a shared device but means an offline morning after a sign-out shows nothing. Sign out when a member of staff leaves, not at the end of every night.

Open the dashboard once during service while the line is up. That is what fills the copy. An iPad that was last opened on Tuesday has Tuesday's diary.

Keep a phone with mobile data nearby. It is the fallback for anything that needs the internet.

Things people ask

The strip says "as of" a time hours ago. That is when the device last reached us. Bookings made online since then are safe with us; they are just not on this screen yet. They appear the moment the line is back.
Does the diner's booking still work while my wifi is down? Yes. Diners book through our servers, not your device. Your wifi has nothing to do with it.
I signed out and now it shows nothing offline. Expected — sign-out clears the copy. Sign in while the line is up and it fills again.
The iPad was off for a fortnight. Apple clears a site's stored data after about a week of not being used. Open the dashboard online once and it is back.
Can I sign in while offline? No. Signing in has to reach us. Whoever is on the counter device should already be signed in before service — that is the point of leaving it signed in.
Does it work on mobile data as well as wifi? Yes, and there is nothing to switch. Offline means the device cannot reach us by any route; if 4G is working, you are simply online.
Will you ever take bookings offline? Creating, moving and cancelling: no, for the reason above. Adding a party to the waitlist while offline — the one thing that does not touch a table — is under consideration.

Still stuck? hello@thezi.app reaches a person, usually the same day.