Vehicle inspections, asset inspections, customer surveys, smart meter installations, safety audits – are all examples of how our customers use the inspections and surveys module.  We’ve added features to address some important demands:

• Completely new dispatch board that allows simultaneously showing dispatch schedules for users, roles/groups, assets (ex. trucks) and trips.  From one scheduling screen you can see, track and manage inspections, orders, loads or anything that can be scheduled. (server)
• Integration with other mobile modules to dynamically populate surveys from current forms.  For example, if you are making a delivery and the driver needs to create a survey for that order, the survey can be pre-populated with fields from that order such as customer name, address, order number, etc.  This eliminates drivers rekeying info on surveys. (mobile)
• Easy batching of dispatches. For customers who create 100’s of dispatches at a time for users, you can specify that only the next X number will be auto-sync’d. For AMR installations, customer canvassing or other large scale inspections, this is a huge benefit to mobile users as well as dispatchers. (server)
• Survey printing using HTML templates to any supported printer such as the Zebra RW420 or Intermec PB41, PB42 or PB52. You can easily add and edit your own print templates. The printing template makes it super easy for you to print well formatted receipts of surveys in the field. Template updates are automatically synchronized without having to package for deployment. (mobile and server)
• Improved barcode scanning support with customer specified lookups such as assets.  (mobile)
• Execute server tasks when surveys are saved so you can selectively take actions such as creating work orders or sending emails with survey results.  This is very powerful and a number of customers are using it to automatically handle post-save actions.  We have an API for adding your own extensions. (server)
• Bulk dispatch importing – you can import dispatches from comma separated value (CSV/Excel) files to automatically create dispatches and assign them to a user. For example, if you have an Excel file containing customers, addresses, etc., you can map the CSV columns to survey fields, automatically assign to a user or group and create the dispatches.  You can save the import template for quickly repeating the import. (server)
• GPS timestamping in the background – surveys can be set to automatically try to get a GPS stamp in the background so you can track where surveys are completed. (mobile)

For a demo of new features, please contact us.

Related posts:

1. Better Mobile Forms Dispatch
2. How to automate utility meter installations
3. GPS and Camera Capture In Inspections
4. Newsletter 1Q2010
5. Delayed Job Support for Better Background Processing