Running activities on the phone

When you start an activity in the ShelterSync phone app, its timer opens. You don't have to stay on the timer while the activity runs: you can look at another animal, check the calendar or open your profile. The activity keeps running until you end it.

A drop-off is different: it is logged as done the moment you log it, so it never runs, has no timer and never shows in the bar. See Drop-offs on the phone.

The bar above the tabs

While you have an activity running, a dark bar sits just above the tabs along the bottom of the screen, on every screen that has those tabs except the activity's own timer. It shows:

• the activity and the animal, for example Walk · Rex;
• how long it has been running, for example 12:34, or Paused when you have paused its timer. If the phone can't tell whether a session with an animal fostered in your home is still running, the bar shows it with no time.

Tap the bar to go straight back to that activity's timer, where you can pause it or end it. For a session with an animal fostered in your home that you started on this phone since the app was last opened, that is the foster timer, the one that opened when you started it. Otherwise it is the ordinary timer. That includes a foster session the phone only knows of from ShelterSync's list of running activities, after the app was closed or from another phone, because that list doesn't say which sessions are foster ones. A pause made on the foster timer shows on the bar. The foster timer doesn't pick up a pause or resume made on another phone.

If you have started filling in a form, such as a survey or Send feedback, tapping the bar first asks Discard your changes?. Keep editing stays on the form; Discard drops what you entered and opens the timer.

If you have more than one activity running at once, the bar says how many, for example 2 activities running, with See all. Tapping it lists them; tap one to open its timer.

With a foster account, the bar knows only of the sessions you started on this phone since the app was last opened: a foster account can't ask ShelterSync for a list of running activities.

The bar goes away when you end the activity on its timer.

When an activity is ended somewhere else

A member of staff can end your activity from the web app, for example when it was left running by mistake. If you have its timer open, the phone checks about every 20 seconds, tells you who ended it and takes you back to Home. The foster timer, for a session with an animal fostered in your home, doesn't make this check.

Anywhere else the phone doesn't check in the background, so the bar can go on showing the activity for a while. It catches up the next time you move to another tab, for a foster's session too. You can also tap the bar: apart from the foster timer, the timer checks straight away and tells you if the activity has already been ended. On any timer, if you tap End Activity on an activity that has already been ended, and the phone can confirm it, it tells you the activity was ended and takes you back to Home.

If End Activity got no answer, for example because the connection dropped, it may still have ended the activity, and the phone remembers that it tried. When it then finds the activity ended, when you tap End Activity again or, on the ordinary timer, at its next check, it takes that as your own end and goes on as after any end: to the activity's survey, or to Home. The ordinary timer still names someone else who ended it. The foster timer can't tell who ended an activity, so after an End Activity that got no answer, any end it finds reads as yours, including one made from the web app, even if yours never reached ShelterSync.

The phone doesn't check in the background on purpose. Every check tells ShelterSync the phone is in use, which would keep a phone left lying at the shelter signed in.

Signing out

The bar belongs to the person signed in. When you sign out, or the phone signs you out, it is cleared, so the next person to sign in on a shared phone doesn't see your activities.