We are exploring Adalo for a simple vehicle inspection workflow intended to replace paper forms, and want to validate whether it is a good fit before going further.
The core use case is:
Create a new inspection record
Capture a small number of photos
Rate vehicle condition using a few fields
View, edit, archive past inspections
Work in low or unreliable connectivity environments
Before investing more time, we had a few questions for those with Adalo experience:
How reliable is Adalo when used in poor connectivity or offline scenarios?
Are there known limitations with photo-heavy inspection style apps?
Any data-structure or relationship pitfalls when inspection records need to be searchable and auditable later?
This is not a complex app, but it does need to be dependable in the field.
Would appreciate insights from anyone who has built or used inspection or field-data apps with Adalo.
I created very similar app about 3 years ago. The biggest challenge is the speed of photo uploading. When you use an image picker in Adalo, the picture is uploaded to the cloud storage in its native size and resolution; so it won’t work offline or in places with poor connection.
In that app we had to upload about 15-20 pictures, so one inspection could take up to 10 minutes. Anyway it was better than sending reports by whatsapp and the app played its role (it took pictures and then generated PDF report, also storing the info in the DB for later auditing, and pushing data to the CRM in Airtable).
But eventually the client had to move to another solution.
Ideally the app should be able to store pictures locally and then sync them with the cloud; but unfortunately it will be quite challenging to do it in Adalo (I can only imagine a custom-coded component). In other lowcode platforms such approach also requires careful planning and some custom coding, based on my experience.
@Yanny well, we still have to store pictures somehow.
The inspection agent takes a picture on their phone, and then they need to upload it to the cloud so that other app users can see it. So upload is essential step.
In theory they can upload these images to, say, Dropbox, generate sharing links, put these links to the app and then pictures become accessible for other app users. This may work; but given the number of manual steps required, the probability of agent’s mistakes is quite high.
I’d say it’s easier to create a Telegram bot, send pictures to it and store them somewhere; and on the backend create an inspection record in the DB and attach links to pictures. But this is not an Adalo-only app
BTW, the alternative to custom component could be using webview with some cloud upload function. Also not trivial I’d say.
