When the Wi-Fi drops

Gyms have bad Wi-Fi. Here is what keeps working and what does not.

What keeps working

The phone and tablet apps keep going when the connection drops. Scores you enter and check-ins you scan are held on the device and sent when the signal comes back. You do not need to do anything to make that happen, and you should not close the app to "reset" it — closing it is the one thing that risks the queue.

What stops

Displays stop updating. A screen showing a scoreboard keeps showing the last thing it received; it does not go blank, but it goes stale. When the connection returns it catches up on its own.

The website needs a connection. Anything you do in a browser needs the network there and then.

Two people, no signal, same competitor

If two judges score the same competitor while both are offline, both entries are kept and sent when the signal returns. CommunATI does not silently pick a winner. The later one lands on top and the earlier one stays in the audit log, so an organizer can see what happened and correct it.

What to do at the end

Before you leave the venue, open the app once somewhere with a signal and leave it open for a few seconds. That flushes anything still queued. If you pack up in a dead zone and the tablet does not get signal again for a week, the scores wait that week.