Our system is built to make team inspections and using multiple devices easy! A team inspection is any inspection where you have two or more inspectors working on the inspection, often at the same time. Using multiple devices might look like using a phone while on the roof or in the crawlspace and using a tablet while you're in the house.
Here's everything you need to know.
Scheduling Multiple Inspectors
To assign multiple inspectors to an inspection when scheduling, simply check their names here:
You can assign any number of inspectors to an inspection!
Adding an Additional Inspector
To add an additional inspector to an already-scheduled inspection, simply use the "Add Inspector" option in the People section of Inspection Details:
Data Merging/Syncing
Each inspector/device will see the inspection in their mobile dashboard and have access to the same report. When each inspector/device saves, the data will merge together. Here's a few rules to ensure seamless data merging:
Edits to separate comments will merge without issue - woohoo!
If multiple inspectors/devices are working within the exact same comment, whoever edits the comment last (in real time) will overwrite the previous inspector's edits. This applies to almost all comment data: title, text, location, recommendation, etc. The one exception to this is photos, which will all save under the same comment.
Some best practices for smoother team inspections include:
Assigning certain sections to certain inspectors. For example, one inspector does all outdoor sections and another does all indoor sections.
If multiple inspectors are doing the same sections/items, use a methodology of adding photos with captions for location to any given defect. That way all the incidents will be merged together. For example, if the defect "Evidence of water intrusion" occurs in multiple places, each inspector is simply adding an additional photo with the caption of the location instead of altering the comment text/location.
If your network connection allows for it, coordinate certain times where each inspector saves up their data mid-inspection. After each saves, each inspector should then "Sync" so they can pull down the data from all other inspectors. This ensures that each inspector sees the latest data at that point.
Saving/Syncing
An important distinction should be noted between saving and syncing when it comes to team inspections or using multiple devices:
Saving means sending a device's data to the cloud. Think of it as "pushing" data up.
Syncing both saves as well as grabs the latest data from the cloud. Think of it as "push-and-pull" for data.
During team inspections or when making edits on multiple devices (including the web!), syncing becomes very important to ensure you're seeing data from other everyone/everywhere else. Otherwise all you can see is what you've done on your specific device! Please review this article for more details on syncing & saving!
Conclusion
Team inspections are a great way to improve efficiency and train specialization for multi-inspector companies. Using multiple devices is a great way to enhance safety by using smaller devices when a free hand is needed, or to take advantage of larger screen sizes when indoors to show clients/agents their major issues.
Please note that while one individual using the same login on two devices is permitted, sharing logins between multiple individuals is against our Terms of Use and may result in bugs/issues! Read more here.