Note: As a real-world example of async(), you can check out this part of the Now in Android app. In the SyncWorker class, the call to sync() returns a boolean if the sync to a particular backend was successful. If any of the sync operations failed, then the app needs to perform a retry.
Link to SyncWorker is broken. I think should be https://github.com/android/nowinandroid/blob/main/sync/work/src/main/kotlin/com/google/samples/apps/nowinandroid/sync/workers/SyncWorker.kt? (i.e. change "java" to "kotlin"