We’re excited to announce the release of Think Crew 2.5, featuring a completely redesigned offline mode that fundamentally changes how you can work with the platform. Whether you’re scouting locations in areas with spotty cell service, flying across the country to prep your next show, or simply dealing with an unreliable internet connection, Think Crew now works seamlessly end-to-end regardless of your connectivity.
Once you’re set up, you can create projects, upload and ingest scripts, build schedules, generate progress reports, and make virtually any changes to your production documents, all while completely disconnected from the internet.
Online Status at a Glance
Think Crew 2.5 introduces a new Online/Offline Icon in the top menu that shows your current connection status at a glance. When you’re online, you’ll see a green circle around the connectivity icon. Click on it and you’ll get detailed information including confirmation that you’re connected, that all your changes have been saved to Think Crew Cloud, and the exact 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 it 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.
Choosing What’s Available Offline
Not every schedule or script needs to be available when you’re offline, and storing everything you’ve ever created locally would of course slow down your browser. That’s why we’ve implemented selective caching that puts you in control. Each schedule and script now displays a cloud icon with a download arrow.
Click the icon to toggle between cloud storage and local storage. When you mark a schedule or script for local storage, Think Crew downloads it into your browser’s cache, making it immediately available the next time you go offline. Anything you don’t specifically cache remains cloud-only, keeping your browser lean and responsive.
Here’s a smart detail: anything you create while offline is automatically cached locally. When you upload a script or create a new schedule without an internet connection, Think Crew knows it wouldn’t make sense to require you to manually cache something you just created, so it handles that automatically.
What Works Offline
The list of what you can do offline is extensive. You can create new projects from scratch, upload scripts, ingest them into schedules, and work with those schedules using all the normal tools you’d expect—sorting strips, adding days, creating breakdowns, and everything else you’d do while online. 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.
What Doesn’t Work Offline
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.
The dashboard’s dynamic content—blog posts, weather information, and links to recent YouTube videos—aren’t available offline since they require active internet connections to populate. The same goes for search functionality. Profile editing works offline, but uploading a new profile image or changing your password doesn’t, as these require server-side validation for security. The subscription and permissions pages are also offline-only 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 for Offline Work
Getting the most out of offline mode requires following a few straightforward guidelines. First, you must be logged into Think Crew before you go offline—without internet access, you can’t authenticate. Second, don’t close the browser tab that has Think Crew open. That tab contains all your cached information, and closing it risks losing unsaved changes. Finally, if you’re working with a team where some members are online and others aren’t, communication becomes crucial.
Understanding “Last Update Wins”
When multiple team members work on the same project with varying connectivity, Think Crew uses a conflict resolution pattern called “last update wins.” Here’s how it works in practice.
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.
The Technical Foundation
Behind the scenes, Think Crew 2.5’s offline mode represents a significant evolution in how the platform handles data synchronization. By implementing sophisticated caching strategies while maintaining the responsiveness you expect from the platform, we’ve created an experience that feels seamless whether you’re connected or not. The system intelligently manages what data needs to be available locally, what can stay in the cloud, and how to reconcile changes when you reconnect.
Moving Forward Untethered
Enhanced offline mode in Think Crew 2.5 reflects our understanding of how production work actually happens. You’re not always at a desk with reliable Wi-Fi. You’re on location scouts, you’re on set in remote areas, you’re traveling between cities to prep multiple shows. Your scheduling software should work wherever you are, whatever your connectivity situation.
With version 2.5, it finally does. Log in when you have internet, cache the schedules and scripts you need, then work with complete confidence knowing that everything you do will sync seamlessly when you reconnect. Production doesn’t stop when the Wi-Fi cuts out, and now neither does Think Crew.
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