App configuration: Area checklists

The Area checklists tab decides how the field app’s checklists of possible defects and checks work for your whole organisation: whether surveyors see them, whether a survey can be finalised with any left open, what each area needs before it’s marked complete, and which items of your own sit on the lists.

What it is

Every external area and room in the field app has a checklist, picked from the area’s name (see Area checklists). They’re on by default. Nothing is required until you say so, so surveyors already using the app aren’t held up.

The tab has four parts:

• In the field app: Show area checklists switches them on or off for everyone. Required before finalising stops a survey being finalised until each area is marked complete, or not inspected with a reason. It’s the same switch as Area Checklists under Required before finalising on the Data collection tab.
• Which areas must be finished: outside areas and rooms, outside areas only, or rooms only. It applies while the checklists are required.
• Needed before an area is marked complete: a grid of checks with a column for outside areas and one for rooms, such as Photos taken of each defect, Moisture readings taken and A severity on every defect found. Your own checks appear here too. These apply whether or not the checklists are required to finalise.
• Your own checklist items: up to 100 possible defects or checks, added to one list (such as Roof or Kitchen or utility room), or to every external area or every room.

How to do it

1. Open Settings → App configuration and choose the Area checklists tab.
2. Leave Show area checklists ticked, and tick Required before finalising if every survey must have its checklists finished.
3. Choose Which areas must be finished.
4. Tick what each kind of area needs under Needed before an area is marked complete.
5. To add an item, choose where it goes under Add to, whether it’s a Possible defect or a Check to carry out, type it and select Add. Remove takes one off, along with any rule that required it.
6. Select Save changes.

How it integrates

• Field app: surveyors see your items on the list under Your own items, and a Needed to finish box for what you ask for. A survey already started picks up a change the next time it’s opened, on the areas not yet marked complete. Areas already complete keep the list they were finished with.
• Finalising: when the checklists are required, the field app and the server both refuse to finalise a survey with an area left open, so an old app build can’t get round it.
• Report: each area’s checklist prints with the area, and every defect found goes into the Schedule of defects, which the office can save as a spreadsheet. Switching the checklists off hides them in the field app; reports of surveys that already have them still print them.
• Scope: these settings are organisation-wide. Scoped app configuration for a person, contractor or works order can’t change them.

Common problems

• Required before finalising can’t be ticked. Tick Show area checklists first: a hidden section is never required.
• A survey type has no checklists. They come with damp and mould, excess cold and structural surveys and general jobs, the survey types with external areas.
• Save changes is refused. Each item needs a type and some text, at most 120 characters, and the same item can’t be added to the same list twice.