Once you have used the system for a few days or tried the included templates, you may decide that you'd like to customize them a bit. This is a comprehensive guide to helping you understand how the system is put together and what changes can be made.
Go to Settings/Categories and Tasks in the menu bar to follow along:
(you may have to be logged in as the shop owner to see this)
First, let's understand the difference between a "Category", a "Task", a "Finding", and a "Recommendation". Here's how an inspection is laid out:
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A "Category" is a main section such as "Underhood", or "Undercar"
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"Tasks" are items to be looked at or checked while in a specific category. So, an inspection is made up of several categories such as Underhood, Undercar, Brakes, etc. and each category can have several tasks. So, you may find tasks such as "Brake fluid condition" and "Battery cables" in an underhood category just as you would expect to find "Brake lines" and "Transmission leaks" in an undercar category.
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"Findings" are what the Technician observes while looking at or performing a task. For instance, if a Tech is working in the "Underhood" category and performing the "Task" of checking the radiator, they may find that the radiator is cracked, thus their "Finding" is "The radiator is cracked".
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"Recommendations" are just that, the Technicians recommendation on how to deal with the abnormal finding. In the above case, the Technician could use a recommendation of either "Replace the radiator", or perhaps "Repair the radiator". You may even want to take it another step and use something like "Replace the radiator, hoses and flush the coolant".
In this system, we are asking the Tech to both tell us what they found in the "Findings" and what should be done about it with a "Recommendation". This insures that when the customer is sent the inspection, we've answered their questions of "Why does it need that" or "What's wrong with it?".
Here's what you'll find in this section: (click a line to jump to that section)
When editing your templates, this screen is the overview. From here, you can add/edit/reorder just about everything. This is your Master List of all categories and tasks in the system. Just because a task is on this screen, that does not mean that they will be on a specific template. Once you have your categories and tasks all done, you will select which ones belong on each template under the Settings/Template Setup menu option
Adding a category:
click on the "Add Category" button in the upper right and type in the name of the category you wish to add.
Editing or reordering categories:
The "Edit Category" button is to the right of each one, just click the button and make changes as needed. To reorder categories, simply grab the category bar with your left mouse button and drag it to the position you wish.
Adding a Task:
Click on the "Add Task" button to the right of any category that you wish to add a task to.
When adding a new task (or editing an old one), there are lots of options so you can customize each one for different purposes. For the image above, here are the steps:
1. This is the category that the task belongs to. You can change this when editing to move a task to a different category
2. The name of the task. Like "Brake fluid condition/level"
3. If you would like to add an option for a tech to show measurements like Miles, Amps, etc. You also have the option to make the measurement mandatory
4. What type of a task is this? Pass/Warn/Fail is your green/yellow/red task which allows the tech to choose from a dropdown the findings and recommendations. A Yes/No task will have the option for a tech to give an explanation if marked as no. A Notes task is simply an open text box for the tech to type in.
5. Whether or not you want to allow the tech to add notes to this task
6. Do you want to allow or make mandatory that a tech adds images to this task?
7. You have the choice if findings and recommendations can be shown or not.
8. You can make this task required, which means the inspection cannot be completed or sent to the customer without this being filled in. We recommend you don't use this until your techs are used to the system as it will cause frustration if over used
9. You can make this task invisible to your customer. Handy when asking for tire sizes or maybe battery types.
10. If you would like to give the tech some instruction on how you want this task used, this puts a popup notice on the checklist for them
11. You can add an explanation for the customer here. Maybe explain the benfits of replacing the cabin filter. You can also add links to external images or videos that explain how things work. Very useful if you have a library of videos.
12. This is a preview of what the customer will see
13. Don't forget to save your work!
Editing or reordering tasks:
To see the list of Tasks for each Category, click the right arrow button to the left of the category name to expand the list. After you see the list of tasks associated with a category, you can easily edit them by clicking the "Edit Task" button. To reorder them, simply drag the task to the position you want it in.
Marking a task as inactive:
If a task is no longer being used by a template, you can disable them and they will not show in this list unless you click the "Show All' button in the upper right corner.
Cleaning up your findings and recommendations:
Often we find that an employee has added new findings to a task and the spelling is off or it is a duplicate of previous findings that should have been used. We can edit the existing findings and recommendations by clicking the Findings and Recommendations button while editing a task.
From the Findings and Recommendations screen, you can merge, delete (if unused), or archive the findings to shorten the dropdown list in the checklist. If you find items spelled wrong, you can fix that here too.
Another helpful tool when dealing with findings and recommendations is the ability to see those that have been added recently and be able to edit them or make them inactive in one easy location. You can see the most recent findings by clicking "Reports/Latest Findings" from the menu bar at the top of your screen. Once you have the list, you can easily inactivate findings or correct spelling issues
Editing Templates:
To make changes or add new templates, we've made that process very easy. Once you have the categories and tasks that you need, it's easy to make those changes, from the menu bar, go to Settings/Template Setup to modify or add to your library of templates.
- You can get a quick preview of what the layout is by clicking on the preview button.
- If you don't want a specific template to show in your list of available templates as you are creating an inspection for a customer, you can turn off the Enabled option.
- To set one of the templates as your default, simply click the Default option to make that change.
To make changes to a template, click the edit button all the way to the right and it will open the template in edit mode. You have the options now of renaming it under the Template Details tab, setting colors and other options under the Inspection Report Options tab, or select which tasks will appear in the template under the Checklist Tasks tab.
If you need any help with this process, feel free to open a ticket or give us a call. We're glad to help out!