A route planner that works without signal

"Works offline" means four different things

When a route planner says it works offline, it can mean any of these, and most apps stop at the first one or two:

1. The map still draws. Tiles you have already looked at stay on the screen. Almost every app does this.
2. The route you loaded keeps following you. The line stays and the turn prompts keep coming, as long as you stay on it. The better apps do this.
3. The plan can change. Skip a stop, move one earlier, add one from the door, and the app re-plans on the phone. Here is where almost everyone freezes: the re-plan is a request to a server, and with no signal the request never returns.
4. The phone can think for itself. A wrong turn gets a new route from the phone. An address can be searched with no connection. The day can be started after a restart with no signal. This needs road data and a router on the phone, not cached pictures of a map.

Rooto Work was built for the fourth meaning from the first day, because the app it lives in, Rooto Maps, exists for the drive with no network.

The two-minute test for any route planner

Run this on whatever app you use today. It takes one parking lot.

1. Plan a route of five stops and start it.
2. Turn on airplane mode. Do not turn it off until the end.
3. Drive, or walk, one block off the route. Does a new route appear from where you are, or does the old line sit there with a spinner?
4. Skip the next stop. Does the route redraw to the stop after it within a second or two, or do you get a connection error, or keep being steered to the stop you skipped?
5. Type the next address into the search box. Does it find the street?
6. Kill the app and open it again. Does your day come back, with your position, or does it ask you to sign in?

What Rooto Work does with no signal

• Before you leave: the roads around the whole day, every leg, are saved on the phone. The app tells you when it is done: Route protected. No map download to choose, no region to pick.
• Wrong turn: a new route from the phone, to the next stop, not past it, with no "lost connection" sentence.
• Skip this stop and Go here next still work: the stop list updates and the phone plans on.
• Search: towns, ZIP codes and your saved places always; street addresses to the block and businesses with your state's packs on the phone (one download on Wi-Fi, kept fresh on its own).
• Mark the stop: Done, Not home, Skipped, a note, a photo, all kept on the phone, synced to nothing.
• At the end: the receipt shows the miles, the minutes with no signal and every reroute the phone handled by itself.

What it does not do yet

Honest list, so you are not surprised. Rooto Work plans the day on the phone from the addresses you give it, but the first ordering of a brand-new day is done while you have a connection; with no signal, the changes to that plan (skip, re-order, add from search) are handled on the phone. There is no signature capture or proof-of-delivery PDF yet, and no dispatcher console. The comparison table says so in plain words.

Who this is for

Anyone whose route passes through the places a phone goes quiet: rural delivery and courier routes, propane and heating-oil drivers, farm and feed supply, septic and well services, home-health aides and visiting nurses between towns, contract mail routes, meter readers, park and forestry crews, and every Flex, DSP and Ground driver whose station is a warehouse with a metal roof.

Price

Rooto Work is a tier of Rooto Pro. One price for a single driver, with time windows, voice and camera entry, status, notes and photos included, and a 30-day free trial. The current figures and the founding-driver price are on the Rooto Work page.