Limits and tips

AINOW Mobile is a live client to your organization's AINOW environment, not a copy of it on your phone. Knowing what that means in practice — for connectivity, battery, and the handful of things the web does that the phone does not — saves you a surprise at the wrong moment.

What works offline

Practically nothing. The app has no offline mode and keeps no local copy of your conversations or records.

• Text already on screen stays readable while you are offline.
• Sending a message, loading history, starting a call, and approving anything all need a connection. Without one you get "Couldn't reach AINOW — check your connection and try again" and a Retry.
• Nothing you type while offline is queued for later. Send it again once you are back.

Only your sign-in session is stored on the device, in the phone's secure keystore.

Battery and data

A voice call is the expensive part of the app: it streams audio in both directions in real time, keeps the screen awake, and holds the audio route. Typing is comparatively cheap.

• Prefer Wi-Fi for long calls where you can.
• Muting does not end a call. The call — and its metered time — continues, so end it when you are done.
• A call ends itself after about twenty seconds with neither you nor Zoe speaking, which is a safety net against a forgotten call, not a substitute for hanging up.
• Chat is ordinary request-and-stream traffic; a day of typing costs a fraction of a few minutes of calling.
• Dark theme suits a phone in a dim room and, on an OLED screen, uses a little less power. Tap your avatar, then Theme….

Keeping the app updated during testing

The app is distributed to invited testers, and test builds are replaced often. Running a stale build is the most common cause of odd behaviour.

• iPhone — open TestFlight and install the newest AINOW build, or turn on automatic updates for it in TestFlight. TestFlight builds stop working once they expire, so if the app suddenly refuses to open, install the current build.
• Android — open the Play Store, find AINOW, and tap Update if one is offered.

Before reporting a problem, install the latest build and try again. When you do report one, say which build number you are on.

How the phone differs from the web

Same assistant, same governance, deliberately smaller surface.

On the phone but not the web: notifications that reach you wherever you are, and deciding an approval out loud during a call.

On the web but not the phone:

• The customer portal — connectors, skills, members, guardrails, voice settings, and everything else administrators configure. See the customer portal docs.
• The Explain panel and the audit replay, where tenant administrators inspect exactly what Zoe did on a given reply.
• A sources panel. On the phone, links Zoe cites are tappable inside the reply itself rather than collected in a separate panel; the approval card still names the system a change targets.
• Separate screens for workflows, work queues, and an approvals inbox. Workflows still run for your organization and their results still reach you — as notifications, and as conversations in your history — but the phone app has no screen for browsing or editing them.
• Memory proposals. Zoe does not offer to remember things about you from the phone.

Other limits worth knowing:

• Phone only, portrait only. There is no tablet layout.
• English and French (Canada), following your phone's language.
• Voice needs your organization's voice module. Without it, the orb and microphone button are simply absent and everything else works.

A few habits that help

• Start a call from inside a conversation, using the microphone button, when you want Zoe to already have the context. Start from the orb when you want a clean slate.
• Read the fields on an approval card, not only its summary — it is the last cheap moment to catch a wrong value.
• Use back to return home between unrelated tasks; each conversation stays in your history, grouped by day.
• Leave notifications on if approvals are part of your job. The count badge only tells you something is waiting once you have opened the app.

What the app can do for you depends on your organization's plan and the systems your administrators have connected.