The phone app

The phone app puts the parts of BookNovi you use away from a desk on a phone's home screen, laid out like the phone's own: pages of apps, folders that open over the page, widgets with your next visit and your time on the clock, a search, and a dock with your four most used apps at the bottom. It is drawn in your business's own colors, light or dark as your phone is, and it shows each person exactly what the web app shows them, no more.

Getting it on your phone

The BookNovi app for iPhone and Android comes to the App Store and Google Play once it is published. Until then, the same home screen and the same pages open in your phone's browser:

1. In the web app, open your business menu at the top and choose On your phone. A page opens with the phone app in a phone's frame and a code beside it.
2. Scan the code with your phone's camera, and sign in with the same email and password you use on the web.
3. In Safari choose Share, then Add to Home Screen; in Chrome, Add to home screen. It then opens like an app.

The frames on that page also show the app on a larger phone, an Android phone and an iPad, and every page in them works: what you do there is done. A few tools need the app itself, since a browser cannot reach that part of the phone; their tiles say so (below).

Signing in

The phone signs in with your own email and password. Where your business asks for a second factor, the phone asks for the code from your authenticator app too. A phone is held to your business's session policy (see Compliance): it signs in again when the policy's hours run out, and it is signed out after thirty days unused. You see the phones signed in for you, and sign one out, under Your sign-in in your menu. A phone that is lost, or the phone of someone who has left, is also signed out by an owner under Admin, Compliance, Sign-In, Phones Signed In; its pages and its notifications end with it. Where your business asks for it, the phone locks after a while away and opens again with Face ID, a fingerprint or the phone's passcode.

The home screen

• Tap an app to open it. An app with a small hourglass is not on the phone yet: tapping it says what it will do there, which parts of the phone it will use, and opens the web app, where it works today.
• Tap a folder to open it over the page. Swipe left and right between pages. The Tools folder holds the calculator, the scanner, voice notes and Capture, for everyone.
• Search finds any of your apps by its name or what it does.
• Press and hold any app, or tap the pencil at the top, to arrange the home screen: the apps jiggle; drag one to a new place, to the edge of the screen to move it to another page, or into the dock; tap its × to take it off the home screen; Add puts back anything you took off, widgets included; Reset puts it back as it started. Tap Done when you are finished. What you arrange is kept on that phone, for each business.
• Tap your business's name at the top to switch to another of your businesses, or to choose light or dark.
• In the app, press and hold BookNovi's own icon on the phone's home screen and choose Talk to BookNovi to start a conversation hands-free.

My day

My day is what you see first in the morning: whether you are on the clock and since when (and a button to end a break), your next visit with how many are left and how many clients are here now, your tasks due today and overdue, and how many unread messages, team chat messages and to-dos are waiting. It reads itself again every ninety seconds and whenever you come back to it.

The calendar

The calendar on the phone shows the day's visits as the web calendar shows them to you: your own if you only see your own (see Team logins), everyone's otherwise, with Mine and Everyone if you perform services. The visit going on now is marked. Each of today's visits has one button for its next step: Check in when the client arrives, Start when the service begins, and Check out at the end, which sends the visit to the register as its sale for the front desk to take payment (where checkout is not yours, it marks the visit completed). The other button opens the visit: the client to call or text, each service with who performs it, what is always worth knowing about the client, and every step to set by hand. The arrows go to other days.

The time clock

Your own punch: your login names you, so there is no code to type. Tap Clock in and the front camera opens with an oval to line your face up with; the picture is taken as you punch and kept with the stretch for sixty days, for a manager to look at if a punch is in doubt. It is never matched by a machine. If the camera is not allowed, the punch still goes through, marked as having no picture. Start a break and End the break are below, with today's stretches and your hours today and this week. Your login has to be linked to you on the team for this; an owner links it under Settings, Team. Punches made on a phone are marked on the time sheet in Time and pay.

Clients

Clients finds a client in your book by name, email or phone, with their visits, what is always worth knowing, their notes and their photos. Call, Text and Email open the phone's own. Say a Note keeps a note said instead of typed, read through first (see Voice notes). Take a before photo and Take an after photo keep the pictures with the client for their next visit.

Add a Client takes a name and a phone or an email, or, in the app, From your contacts opens the phone's own contact picker, where you choose one person and only that person is read. Someone already in the business with that email or phone is not added twice, and nobody is put on a mailing list from here.

Stock and the scanner

Stock looks up a barcode, a stock tag's label (TAG and its number) or a place's label (LOC and its number), or any of them typed, an item's number or its barcode. An item shows what is on hand, available and on order, in all and at each place it is kept; a place shows what is on it. See Warehouses and bins for the labels.

Scan, in the Tools folder, reads every code the business uses and offers the next step: an item or a place opens in Stock, a bin's own code reads as its place, a gift card shows what is left on it, a room, chair or table says which it is, and a customer's site checks you in at their stop on today's day on the road. It pauses after each code, so nothing is read twice. A pick ticket is picked by scanning each item on the ticket's own page. In the app the phone's camera reads the code; in a browser, the camera reads it where the browser can, and otherwise you type it.

A Bluetooth barcode scanner that types like a keyboard works in every field of every page, in the app and in a browser, with nothing to set up: point it at a code and it types it where the cursor is.

Tags

In the app, an NFC tag can carry a code: hold the top of the phone to one. Under Scan, Write a Tag, a stock place or a bin is scanned first and then written on a tag, and Write a tag for a room, chair or table lists them with their codes (a room, chair or table gets a code of its own the first time). On the map, a customer's card has Write a tag for their door. A tag carries the same text as its printed label, so a tap and a scan find the same thing, and a tag at a customer's door checks you in at their stop.

Whether a tag is locked once it is written is the business's choice, under Admin, Compliance, Sign-In, Tags the Phones Write: a locked tag keeps what it says for good, and an open one can be written over by any phone held to it. On an iPhone a tag is read with the app open.

The calculator

The calculator works as a phone's does, with large keys: 2 + 3 × 4 is 14, = again repeats the last step, and percent works as an iPhone's. Scientific adds memory, powers and roots, trigonometry with a 2nd key, logarithms, factorials and constants, in degrees or radians. Convert turns lengths, weights, volumes, temperatures, areas, speeds, times, data, energy, pressure and angles from one unit to another, and money between currencies at the day's reference rates, once BookNovi has them. A long press on the result copies it. It works with no connection, and at /m/calc in a browser with a keyboard.

Voice notes

Voice Notes, in the Tools folder, is for a note said as you walk out of a visit or a meeting: say it, read the tidied words through, and keep it on the client, the business in Sales or the task it is about. Voice notes says how. Wispr Flow and the keyboard's own dictation type into every field as well.

Capture: scans made into PDFs

Capture, in the app's Tools folder:

1. Scan a document finds each page's edges and straightens it, where the app has the phone's document scanner; otherwise Take a page takes each page with the camera. Choose photos and Choose a PDF bring in what is already on the phone.
2. Make the PDF puts the pages in one PDF, on the phone itself, so it works with no connection.
3. Then Share sends it anywhere the phone's share sheet reaches, Attach to a record puts it on a client, a vendor, a business in Sales or a project whose files your business keeps in its Dropbox or OneDrive (see Files in Dropbox or OneDrive), and Send to the books puts it in the books' bills to be read.

What you capture stays in your own inbox on that phone, never on BookNovi's servers, until you attach it; then it is taken off the phone. The inbox is cleared after thirty days, and when you sign the phone out. A PDF too large to send at once is made again smaller, page by page; one that still will not fit says so. Sending a PDF by email from BookNovi, and contracts as a place to attach to, come later.

Share to BookNovi: in another app, share a photo or a PDF and choose BookNovi. It lands in Capture to attach, and waits there if the phone is not signed in yet.

Map my customers

Map My Customers, in the On the road folder, is your customers on a map with your day of visits to them, driven in your own map app and checked in where you stand. See Map my customers.

Talk to BookNovi

The Assistant in the dock opens Talk to BookNovi: the assistant in the app, as you, with your switches and your client book. Ask "who is coming in this afternoon?" or "move Zoe to Friday at 10". The phone hears you with its own speech recognition and says the answers in its own voice, with the words on the screen as they go.

• Push to talk: tap Talk, say it, and tap Stop and send. Hands-free listens again after each answer and stops after two quiet turns.
• A change is said back to you as a question and made only on a clear yes, said or tapped (Yes, do it or No); anything else is asked once more and then left as it was.
• Say the answers aloud turns the voice off and on. Where the phone cannot hear you, type instead; the answers are said all the same.

The phone holds no key of its own for the assistant; it sends your words to BookNovi, which answers as the web app's assistant does. ChatGPT's voice is on the web, under Assistants and voice (see Talk to BookNovi from Claude or ChatGPT).

Notifications

The app tells you of a booking of yours made or changed, your client arriving, a message for you, approvals waiting and stock running low, each as you choose, with quiet hours. See Notifications on your phone.

Printers

In the app's Settings, Printers: Look for printers finds the Bluetooth Low Energy label printers near the phone that speak ESC/POS; choose yours, its paper (58 or 80 mm) and the code page its accents print in, and Print a test label. A bin's or a place's Print its label then prints there: the code in words and as a barcode. Many receipt printers use the older classic Bluetooth, which an iPhone cannot reach; receipts and scales come later. Use the stand-in printer prints nothing and shows what a printer would have been sent, which is what a demo business prints on.

Permissions

The app asks for a part of the phone only the first time something needs it, and says first, in its own words, what it is for: the camera for scans and the clock's picture, photos you choose, the microphone and speech recognition while you record or talk, the contacts you choose, where you are while you use the map, notifications, Face ID, Bluetooth for printers, NFC for tags, and sharing into the app. Nothing is asked when you install it or sign in, and nothing runs in the background. Settings, Permissions lists each with what it is for and where it stands, with Ask now or Open the phone’s settings where it was turned down.

What needs the app

Everything above works in a browser except what only the app can reach: Capture and Share to BookNovi, Talk to BookNovi, tags, printers, contacts from the phone, the app icon's press and hold, notifications, and Face ID. Until the app is in the stores, those tiles say so.

Best practices

• Put the apps you use all day in the dock, and the rest in their folders; the home screen stays calm.
• Clock in from the phone you carry, where you start work; the picture is the record that it was you.
• Check a client in from the phone as they walk in, so the front desk and the person doing the service both see them arrive.
• Scan papers into Capture as they are handed to you, and attach them before you leave; nothing is kept on the phone for long.
• If a phone is lost, sign it out from the web the same day, under Your sign-in in your menu.