Mobile

Overview

The Mobile page is the device registry for include GO — the place where a manager provisions a phone for a team, emails the holder their activation code, watches the fleet check in, and retires a device when it is lost, replaced, or no longer in service.

The model is one active device per team. A device record in GO is really a slot: it names the team the device belongs to, the person who carries it (the holder), and an optional friendly label. The slot exists in GO before any phone touches it. When the holder installs include GO on the actual phone and types the activation code, the phone claims that slot and the record fills in with the platform, app version, OS version, and check-in times.

This article covers device administration from the GO web app. For what the field team does inside the app on the phone itself, see the GO Mobile article.

Where to Find Devices

Click Mobile in the main left sidebar. The entry sits near the bottom of the main navigation group, below Analytics and AI Usage.

Navigation path: Dashboard → Mobile

The sidebar entry only appears if your role has the devices view permission.

The Mobile Page

The page is a single grid of every device slot in the business unit, with an activation-code bar above it. Everything you do to a device happens from the right-click menu on its row, or by editing a cell inline.

What you see on this screen

Grid columns

The grid sorts by Device name ascending by default. Device, Last seen, and Created are sortable; Team, Holder, Status, and Presence are not (Status and Presence are derived from several underlying fields, so sorting them would give a misleading order).

The Activation Code

Every business unit has one activation code, shown in the bar above the grid. It is a two-part code — your company code, a dash, and a secret half, for example acme-k7p2mfr9. The same code activates every device in the business unit; it is not per-device and not per-person.

The generated secret half uses a deliberately confusion-free alphabet: no zero or letter O, no one, letter L, or letter I. That is so the code survives being read aloud over a radio, texted, and typed on a phone keyboard.

Two buttons sit on the bar:

• Copy — puts the code on your clipboard. If your browser blocks clipboard access, GO tells you so you can select and copy it manually, rather than letting you text a code you never actually copied.

• Rotate — generates a brand-new code. A confirmation dialog warns you first: "A new code is generated immediately and every previously shared code stops working. Devices already activated are not affected."

Rotating changes only the secret half — your company code stays the same. Rotate when a code has leaked, or when someone left the company holding a code you'd rather retire. Any invite emails already sent carry the old code and will stop working, so after a rotation, resend the invite to anyone who hasn't activated yet.

The bar reads "not set up yet" when the business unit has no activation code configured. Devices cannot be activated and invites cannot be sent until it is set. If Rotate returns an error in that state, the company code half hasn't been seeded for this business unit — contact your implementation contact.

Creating a Device

Right-click anywhere in the grid and choose Create device…. The Create device dialog opens.

Create device fields

The dialog's footer hint states the rule outright: One active device per team.

After saving, GO tells you exactly what happened:

• "Device created" with the recipient address — the invite went out.

• "Device created, invite not sent" — the slot exists but the email didn't go. The message names the fix: the holder has no email on file, or the activation code isn't set up yet. Correct it and use Send activation invite from the row.

• "Device created" with "Send the activation invite when the holder is ready" — you left the invite box unchecked.

A device slot that no phone has claimed yet shows Status Active and Presence Not deployed.

Sending the Activation Invite

Right-click a device row and choose Send activation invite. If an invite has already gone out for that device, the menu item reads Resend activation invite instead.

Who the invite goes to

GO emails the current holder's email address from their Person record. If the holder has no email on file, GO falls back to the address the last invite for that device was sent to. That order matters: the current holder always wins, so reassigning a device never mails a live activation code to the previous holder.

What the invite says

There are two versions of the email, and GO picks the right one automatically.

The welcome invite — subject "Your [Company] GO Mobile activation code" — is what a first-time holder gets. It tells them to install include GO, open it, and enter the activation code, then sign in with their GO password. If they are new to GO, the password they enter during activation becomes their GO password. If they've forgotten it, the app's Forgot password option emails them a reset code.

The reset invite — subject "Your [Company] GO Mobile device was reset" — goes out on the Replace flow. The holder already knows GO, so instead of welcoming them it explains that their old phone was disconnected and walks through re-activating on the new phone with their existing GO password.

Both versions close with the same note: if the code doesn't work, ask your manager to resend the invitation, because codes can change.

When the invite can't be sent

GO reports a specific reason rather than a generic failure:

• No recipient — the holder has no email on file. Add one on their Person record, then resend.

• No activation code — the business unit's activation code isn't set up. Set it in the bar above the grid, then resend.

• Send failed — the mail server rejected it. Nothing was sent and nothing was recorded as sent, so simply retry with Resend activation invite.

Deploying a Device to a Person and Team

"Deployed" means a phone has actually activated into the slot. Until that happens, the slot is provisioned but empty, and you can freely edit it. Click the Team or Holder cell in the grid to open a searchable picker; pick a new value, or choose — Unassign — to clear it.

The Team picker deliberately lists only teams without a device, so you cannot double-book a team by accident. If you try anyway, GO refuses with "That team already has a device."

Fields lock once a phone claims the slot

The moment a phone activates into the slot, the assigned Team and Holder lock. A small padlock icon appears in the cell, the cell stops being editable, and the server refuses the change with "Team is locked once the device is deployed" or "Holder is locked once the device is deployed."

This is intentional: a deployed device is already syncing that team's work, and silently pointing it at a different team would misroute live field data. To move a device to a different team or holder, deactivate it permanently and create a new device for the new team.

One nuance: the lock applies per field, and only to fields that are actually filled in. A device that deployed with, say, no holder assigned can still have a holder set afterward — an empty slot stays editable so you can fill in what's missing. What you cannot do is change or clear a value that was already set when the phone claimed the slot.

The Device label and the note bubble are never locked. You can rename a deployed device at any time.

Device Status — What Each One Means

The Status column shows the device record's place in its lifecycle. There are four states.

Retired rows (Replaced and Deactivated permanently) are read-only records: they stay in the grid so the device history answers questions later, but their right-click menu offers no actions except Create device, their cells can't be edited, and their notes are read-only.

Presence — is the phone talking to GO?

Status is about the record; Presence is about the phone.

Retiring a Device — Replace vs. Deactivate

Both actions take the current phone out of service permanently. They differ in what happens next, and choosing wrong costs the holder a trip back to a manager. The rule of thumb:

• The holder is getting a new phone → use Replace device.

• The device is gone for good and nothing takes its place → use Deactivate permanently.

Replace device (new phone)

Right-click a device and choose Replace device (new phone)…. The action only appears on devices a phone has actually activated into — there is nothing to replace on a slot that was never claimed.

GO confirms first: "The current phone for [device] goes offline permanently (unsynced work on it is lost) and the holder is emailed a fresh activation invite. On the new phone they enter the code and sign in with their existing password."

Confirm, and GO does three things in one operation:

1. Retires the old record. It is marked inactive and stamped Replaced with a new device. The old phone goes offline at its next contact with GO.

2. Creates a replacement slot carrying the same label, team, and holder forward. It shows Reactivate Pending in the grid.

3. Emails the holder the reset invite — the "your device was reset" version, addressed to the holder's current email.

If the email fails, the replacement slot still exists — the swap is never rolled back by a mail problem. GO reports "Device replaced, invite not sent" with the reason, and you can resend from the new row.

The holder then installs include GO on the new phone, enters the activation code, and signs in with the GO password they already use. The new phone claims the pending slot and re-syncs.

Deactivate permanently

Right-click a device and choose Deactivate permanently…. This is the red menu item at the bottom, and the confirmation is blunt:

"[Device] will be deactivated permanently and cannot be reactivated: the phone goes offline at its next start and unsynced work on it is lost. Make sure this is what you want; if the holder is getting a new phone, use Replace device instead. The row stays in the grid as a read-only record of who held it."

Confirm, and the device is marked inactive and retired. The phone goes offline at its next contact with GO. The record stays in the grid, read-only, showing Deactivated permanently, so you keep the history of who held which device.

Retiring the device also frees the team's device slot, so the team can be equipped with a new device immediately if you want.

Reactivating the same phone

What is permanent is the record, not the handset. If a holder's phone was replaced and then the original handset turns up — or a manager clicked Replace by mistake — that same phone can come back, because GO reactivates through the pending slot rather than through the dead record.

Here is the mechanism, because it explains exactly when it works and when it doesn't. When a phone contacts GO, GO looks up the record for that specific install. If the record it finds is retired, GO checks whether the holder's current team has a provisioned, unclaimed device slot — a slot in Reactivate Pending. If one exists, that slot is the manager's standing authorization for that team to come back online, so the phone is allowed to claim it, and it works for the same handset just as it does for a new one. The device comes back with the holder's existing password and re-syncs.

So, in practice:

• After a Replace, the same phone can reactivate — the replacement slot is sitting there pending. This is the recovery path for a replacement declared by mistake and for a recovered handset.

• After a permanent deactivation, nothing reactivates — that action leaves no pending slot behind. The phone is told to go offline.

• To deliberately bring a team back after a permanent deactivation, create a new device for that team. The new slot is a fresh authorization, and a phone — including one that was previously deactivated — can activate into it.

• Reactivation requires the holder to have just proven their credentials, and to be an active member of the team holding the pending slot. A phone that merely polls in the background is not offered a way back.

When a phone is told to go offline and no reactivation path exists, the app says to contact your manager rather than showing a button that would fail.

Photos From the Field

When a team member takes checklist photos or videos in GO Mobile, they upload automatically and land on the task itself. Open the task (Tasks page, right-click the task and choose Edit Task Detail) and click the Photos/Videos/Docs tab — field photos appear alongside any files the office uploaded, each marked with where it came from. There is nothing to email or transfer by hand.

If the team is out of signal range, photos wait on the device and upload when the connection returns.

Where Used Elsewhere

• Tasks — photos and videos captured in the field appear on the task's Photos/Videos/Docs tab, and checklist items team members complete on mobile update the task's checklists.

• Teams — each device is deployed to a team, and the crew sees that team's schedule in the app.

• People — the device holder is a person record, and a person's user access controls whether they can sign in to GO Mobile at all.

Permissions

Out of the box, Branch Manager and Production Manager carry both permissions. Adjust in Roles & Permissions.

The activation code is treated as a credential throughout: it is never sent to the browser at all for a user who only has devices view.

Good to Know

• One device per team is enforced, not just suggested. The Team picker hides teams that already have a device, and the server refuses a duplicate even if two managers try at the same moment.

• Retiring a device frees the team's slot. A team is never permanently blocked by an old device record — that's why the retired rows are read-only history rather than live records still holding the team.

• Label your devices before you have many. "Spray Team 1 iPhone" is findable; "New device" repeated eleven times is not. The label is searchable and the grid sorts by it.

• Add the holder's email before creating the device. That single field is what makes the invite work; without it, the slot is created but nobody receives the code.

• Rotate the activation code when someone leaves, then resend invites to anyone who hasn't activated yet. Already-activated devices keep working; only unactivated codes die.

• Use the note bubble for hardware facts. Serial number, carrier, case color, who bought it, whether it's rugged — the field GO doesn't have a column for is the one you'll need when a device goes missing.

• "Offline" is usually fine. The mobile app is built to work with no signal, so a team in a dead zone reads Offline all morning and syncs everything when coverage returns. Read Last seen before assuming a problem.

• Leave "Show deactivated" on. The retired rows are the audit trail of who held which device when, and they cost nothing to keep in view.

Common Questions

Do I need a separate activation code per device or per person? No. One activation code covers the whole business unit. What ties a phone to a team is the device slot plus the holder signing in as themselves.

Is the activation code a password? No. It gets a phone to the activation screen; the holder still signs in with their own GO password — the same one they use on the web. That's why the code is safe to text.

What if the holder doesn't know their GO password? If they're new to GO, the password they type during activation becomes their GO password. If they've forgotten an existing one, the app's Forgot password option emails them a reset code.

I rotated the code and someone can't activate. Their invite email carries the old code. Right-click their device row and choose Resend activation invite — the new email carries the current code.

Why can't I change the team on this device? A phone has already activated into it, so the team is locked (you'll see the padlock in the cell). Deactivate the device permanently and create a new one for the other team.

The holder got a new phone. What do I do? Right-click the device and choose Replace device (new phone). The old phone is retired, a replacement slot appears as Reactivate Pending, and the holder is emailed re-activation instructions.

I clicked Replace by mistake and the holder still has the original phone. Can they get back on? Yes. The replacement slot is pending, and the original handset can activate into it just like a new phone would. The holder re-enters the activation code and signs in with their existing password.

I deactivated a device permanently by mistake. Can I undo it? Not that record — the confirmation warns you before you click for exactly this reason. Create a new device for that team; the holder activates the phone into the new slot with the activation code.

What happens to work on a phone that gets replaced or deactivated? Anything already synced to GO is safe. Anything still sitting unsynced on that phone is lost, which is why both confirmations say so. If you can, let the phone come online and finish syncing before you retire it.

A device shows "Reactivate Pending" and never turns Active. No phone has claimed the slot yet. Confirm the holder received the invite (resend if not), that they're using the current activation code, and that they're still an active member of that team.

Why is the Platform column empty? Platform, App / OS, and Last seen are all reported by the phone itself. A slot no phone has claimed yet has nothing to report.

Can two people share one device? The device belongs to the team, and the Holder names the person responsible for it. Anyone on that team signs in on it as themselves; the holder is who you call when the device needs to be found.

Does the Mobile page control what the field team sees in the app? No. This page manages devices — provisioning, invites, and retirement. What the team does inside the app is covered in the GO Mobile article.

Related Topics

• Teams — Devices are assigned to teams; a team needs to exist first

• People — Where a holder's email comes from (the invite depends on it)

• Roles & Permissions — Control who can view and manage devices