Connecting your AI provider
Who can do thisPermission: settings ≥ 1
AI features in HousingSurvey Pro run on your own AI provider account and key — there is no shared platform key, so you stay in control of the provider, the cost, and the data-processing terms.
What it is
With no key configured, AI features are simply off: the platform fails closed rather than falling back to a shared key, because there isn’t one. Once a key is added, AI-assisted drafting and photo description light up across the app and portal — always as an advisory suggestion a person reviews, never as something that writes to evidence on its own.
Before you start
Connecting a provider requires organisation-admin access to Settings.
How to do it
- Open Settings → AI.
- Choose your provider and paste your own API key.
- Select a model — vision-capable models are needed for photo-analysis features.
- Click Test connection to confirm the key and model resolve correctly before saving.
- Save. AI-assisted features become available across the app and portal.
How it integrates
- AI Polish tidies a surveyor’s dictated or typed notes into clearer report wording, preserving the facts recorded and adding nothing new.
- Photo analysis describes what’s visible in a defect photo to assist the surveyor, and can suggest repair codes from your own Schedule of Rates catalogue where one is loaded — the model never sees or invents rates.
- Executive summaries and statutory letter drafts give a starting point the author reviews and edits before sending.
- AI never computes a compliance assessment — HHSRS, condensation and indoor-air banding are calculated by deterministic engines, not a model — and it is refused entirely on a record that has already been finalised.
Common problems
- AI features have disappeared or never appeared. No key is configured, or the key has been revoked or rotated — check Settings → AI and re-test the connection.
- Test connection fails. This returns your provider’s own error, shortened for display — check the key is current and that billing or quota is enabled on the provider account.
- Photo analysis isn’t available for a hazard type. Not every hazard has an AI preset configured — this is deliberate for some hazards rather than a fault.