Back from site.
A site visit is an hour of noticing, followed by an evening of trying to remember what you noticed. The photos are on your phone among everything else, the notes are on the back of a drawing, and the basement where the damp was had no signal anyway.
What a site visit needs from software is very little, and it needs it to work underground.
Three buttons
On site, the phone shows three big buttons: Photo, Record and Note. Photo opens the camera. Record keeps going until you stop it, for the walk round with the client or the contractor explaining a detail, and keeps the screen awake while it does. Note is a few typed lines. Everything appears above the buttons in the order you captured it.
Tags and notes are there if you want them, and most photos need neither. The practice keeps its own tags, most used first, and going room by room you can tag the next photos the same way until you say stop.
No signal
Start the visit where there is signal. After that, everything you capture is kept on the phone first, and sent in the order you took it once there is signal again. The line above the buttons says how it is going: all sent, two things to go, or three things waiting for signal, safe on this device.
Photos are made smaller before they are sent, still sharp enough to read a crack or a label, and the phone’s location is taken out of them. The time each was taken is kept.
Written up, and found again
Finish the visit when you leave and it shows when it started and ended. Write it up in the day book opens a fresh entry on the job, on the day of the visit. Everyone in the practice can read it; only you add to it.
A job keeps every visit, newest first. Photos by tag shows how many of the job’s photos carry each tag, across every visit, so the photos of the parapet flashing from six visits are one tap away.
In the small print
- Photos from the phone’s library, several at a time
- Recordings up to an hour
- Location taken out of every photo before it leaves the phone
- Unsent captures picked up again the next time you open the visit
- A director can remove something that should not be kept, but cannot change it
- Downloads named with the job and the time taken
Questions practices ask
- Does it work without signal on site?
Yes, once the visit is started. Photos, recordings and notes are kept on the phone and sent in the order they were captured when there is signal. Keep the page open until then.
- Are site photos kept private?
The files are private to the practice. Everyone in the practice can read a visit; the location is taken out of each photo before it is sent.
- How do I find photos of one thing across many visits?
Tag them. A job’s site notes show every tag with its count, and a tag shows every photo carrying it across every visit.