Salesforce iOS Mobile App : IT Support Portal

To address the challenges our employees face with poor cellular data signal when using the Salesforce mobile iOS app, here's a breakdown of potential solutions and helpful features:

Offline Access

The Salesforce mobile app for iOS has an offline mode that can significantly help when cellular data connectivity is poor or unavailable. By enabling offline access, employees can:

View cached data: Access recently viewed records for the five most recently used objects, as well as recent tasks and dashboards. The app also caches other data accessed during a Salesforce session.
Create, edit, and delete records: Make changes to cached records and create new records for recently accessed objects. These changes are saved locally on the device and automatically synced to Salesforce when the device regains internet connectivity.

How to Enable Offline Access

Go to Setup in Salesforce.
In the Quick Find box, enter "Offline" and select Salesforce Offline.
To allow viewing data offline, ensure Enable caching in Salesforce for Android and iOS is selected (this is often enabled by default).
To allow creating, editing, and deleting records offline, select Enable offline create, edit, and delete in Salesforce for Android and iOS.
Click Save.

Managing Offline Data

Upon logging in, the cache is initially empty. Users need to interact with data to populate the cache.
Salesforce automatically caches up to 30 recently accessed records for the five most recently used objects, along with recent tasks and dashboards.
Users can customize their offline cache by going to their profile menu in the mobile app, selecting Settings > Offline Preferences, and choosing up to seven items they want to access offline.
Users can manually initiate caching by going to Settings > Offline Cache > Start Caching. It's recommended to do this after each login.
Records remain in the cache for 30 days from the last access. Logging out removes all cached data.

Limitations of Offline Mode

Data Access: Only cached data is available offline.
Creating Records: New record creation is limited to recently accessed objects, and "New" actions in action bars or related lists are not supported offline.
Editing and Deleting: These actions are only available for cached records.
Lookups and Picklists: Dependent lookups and picklists may not fully function offline unless the user interacted with them before going offline. Lookup filters are not supported.
Other Actions: Actions like "Log a Call," "Post," or "Change Owner" are not available offline.
Notes: Notes with images and adding images to notes are not supported offline. Relating notes to records offline is also not possible.
Events: New events created offline are saved as drafts without a visual indicator.
Tasks: Creating tasks offline requires disabling the simplified "New Task" form in Salesforce Setup. Selecting/deselecting task checkboxes is not supported offline.
Communities (Experience Cloud Sites): These are not supported in offline mode.

Additional Considerations

Mobile Home: This personalized dashboard provides quick access to frequently used reports, lists, tasks, and events. Configuring this effectively can help users quickly see key information even with brief moments of connectivity.
Lightning Web Components (LWC) Offline: Salesforce offers a more advanced "Mobile Offline" feature based on Lightning Web Components, available with the "Salesforce Mobile App Plus" license. This allows developers to create custom offline experiences with more control over data priming and synchronization. However, it requires development effort.
Optimize Page Layouts: Complex page layouts with many fields or picklists can lead to records being too large to cache effectively. Simplifying layouts for mobile users can improve offline availability of critical data.
Network Connectivity Troubleshooting: While not a Salesforce feature, basic network troubleshooting on the iOS device itself can sometimes help. This includes:
- Checking cellular signal strength.
- Toggling cellular data off and on.
- Ensuring data roaming is enabled if necessary.
- Trying a different location if possible.
- Verifying the device doesn't have any network restrictions enabled.
Landing Tabs: Setting a simple landing tab like "Chatter" or "Tasks" instead of more data-intensive tabs like "Events" or "Today" can improve initial loading times, especially on slow connections.
Clear Mobile Cache: Regularly clearing the Salesforce mobile app's cache (through the app's settings) can sometimes resolve performance issues.