No access: recording attempts
Not every visit ends in a survey. Recording access or an appointment outcome logs what actually happened — a locked door, a refusal, a rescheduled appointment — as its own sealed evidence, without pretending a survey took place.
What it is
From a job card in the capture app, or from the job’s drawer in the portal, Record access / appointment outcome logs one of: couldn’t gain access (with a reason — no answer, access refused, property appears vacant, or other), a missed or changed appointment, or a 24-hour inspection offer’s outcome. A field-logged attempt requires a GPS fix at the property, exactly like starting a survey; an office-logged attempt never carries one, so it can never be mistaken for GPS-anchored field evidence. A photo — for example a calling card left at the door — is optional either way.
How to do it
- From the job card (in the app) or the job’s Timeline (in the portal), choose Record access / appointment outcome, or Can’t gain access? if no attempt has been logged yet for this job.
- Pick What happened and, if it’s a failed access attempt, the Reason.
- Add a note and, optionally, a photo — the photo is timestamped, geotagged and fingerprinted the same way any evidence photo is.
- Submit. This is a direct, server-sealed action — it needs a live connection to complete, same as finalising a survey.
How it integrates
An access attempt or appointment outcome is created entirely server-side and hash-chained into the same evidentiary sequence as sealed surveys for that job, appearing on the case’s Timeline and incrementing its attempt counters. It does not pause or extend the statutory clock — logging an attempt is evidentiary bookkeeping, not a mechanism for stopping the deadline. It does trigger a notification to the office and an audit-log entry.
Common problems
- I’m offline and the submit button doesn’t respond. Access attempts are sealed the instant you submit — there’s no offline queue for them, unlike day-to-day survey capture. Reconnect and try again.
- The attempt count includes ones I didn’t log. Office staff can log an attempt too (for example, from a phone call with the resident) — the counter is shared across both sources, and shows how many were office-logged separately.
- I expected this to move the deadline. It doesn’t — an access attempt is recorded evidence of what happened on a visit, not an input to the statutory clock.