Offline Mode

Think Crew’s offline mode allows you to use the platform end-to-end without an internet connection. Work on location scouts, during flights, or in areas with unreliable connectivity while maintaining full productivity. When properly configured, offline mode enables you to create and manage projects, upload and ingest scripts, build and modify schedules, generate progress reports, and make changes to production documents, all while completely disconnected from the internet. All changes made while offline automatically sync to Think Crew Cloud when you reconnect.

Monitoring Your Connection Status

The connectivity icon located in the top menu displays your current connection status at a glance. When you’re online, the icon shows a green circle around it, indicating an active connection to Think Crew Cloud. Clicking on the icon provides detailed sync information including connection confirmation, save status for all changes, and the date and time of your last sync.

When you go offline, the icon changes to show a red circle with a line through it. Clicking on the offline icon confirms your offline status and displays the number of cached changes waiting to sync when you reconnect. This transparency means you always know exactly where your data stands.

Managing Offline Availability

Think Crew uses selective caching to give you control over which documents are available offline. Not every schedule or script needs to be accessible when you’re disconnected, and storing everything you’ve ever created locally would slow down your browser. Each schedule and script includes a cloud icon with a download arrow that controls local storage.

By default, documents are stored in cloud storage only, meaning they’re available when online but conserve browser cache space. To make a document available offline, click the cloud icon to download it to your browser cache. Once cached locally, the document will be available the next time you go offline. Anything you don’t specifically cache remains cloud-only, keeping your browser lean and responsive.

Documents created while offline are automatically cached locally. When you upload a script or create a new schedule without an internet connection, Think Crew handles the caching automatically since it wouldn’t make sense to require you to manually cache something you just created. This ensures immediate access to content you create without requiring additional steps.

Working Offline

The offline experience in Think Crew is remarkably comprehensive. You can create new projects from scratch, upload scripts and ingest them into schedules, and work with those schedules using all the normal tools you’d expect. This includes sorting strips, adding days, creating breakdowns, and using all standard scheduling tools. You can generate progress reports, edit your profile information, and even put your computer to sleep mid-session. Close your laptop, stow it in your bag, pull it out hours later in a completely different location, and pick up right where you left off with all your changes intact.

However, there are some thoughtful limitations to offline mode, each designed to balance functionality with performance and security. While offline, you’re limited to working within your current project. The project switcher is disabled because caching all the information from all your projects would create unnecessary overhead on your device. Since most work sessions focus on a single project anyway, this trade-off makes sense for the vast majority of use cases.

The dashboard’s dynamic content isn’t available offline since these features require active internet connections to populate. This includes blog posts, weather information, and links to recent YouTube videos. The same restriction applies to search functionality, which needs server connectivity to work properly.

Profile editing works offline, but certain account security features don’t. You cannot upload a new profile image or change your password while disconnected, as these require server-side validation for security. The subscription and permissions pages are also unavailable offline since they need real-time data from the server. This also means you can’t add or modify user permissions while disconnected.

One restriction that might seem obvious but is worth noting: you can’t log out while offline. Logging out is a server-side operation that sets security permissions on the backend, so it requires an active connection.

Best Practices

Getting the most out of offline mode starts with proper preparation before you disconnect.

• You must be logged into Think Crew before you go offline
• While working offline, keep the browser tab with Think Crew open
• Understand how the data synchronization works, see below

Understanding Data Synchronization

Think Crew uses a conflict resolution pattern called “last update wins.” The most recent update received by the server becomes the current state, regardless of when changes were originally made. Understanding how this works helps prevent unexpected overwrites when team members have varying connectivity.

Imagine your First AD changes a project name to “Casablanca” while online. The server saves that change. Later, your Second AD changes it to “Citizen Kane”. The server now knows the project is called “Citizen Kane.” This all makes sense, nothing unusual here. But later still, the First AD goes offline to scout locations. Then while still offline, they change the project name to “Star Wars.” This change is stored in their local cache, but the server doesn’t know about it yet—as far as Think Crew Cloud is concerned, the project is still “Citizen Kane.”

That evening, the Second AD, who’s been online the whole time, changes the name to “Patton.” The server updates accordingly. But here’s where it gets interesting: when the First AD comes back online later, their cached changes sync to the server. Even though the change to “Star Wars” was made earlier than the change to “Patton”, it’s the last update received by the server, so “Star Wars” becomes the current project name.

This isn’t a bug—it’s intentional behavior. The practical solution is team communication. If your First AD is working offline in a van during a scout and your Second AD is back in the office, a quick message—”I’m making changes to the schedule while offline, please don’t modify this section until I sync back up”—prevents conflicts before they happen.

Watch the Video

Check out our video on working offline with Think Crew: