Alpha Tracker - Tips & Tricks - Webinar #6

Jack 

Right, we'll get started. So, hi and welcome to the Alpha Tracker webinar. This is our monthly tips and tricks webinar and this month we'll be focusing on Tracker Mobile. So I'm Jack, I'm the Alpha Tracker Product Lead and I'm joined by my colleague Kim who's our Alpha Tracker Specialist. 

Kim 

Hello. 

Jack 

and Dan's also on the webinar with us and he'll be monitoring the Q&A so if you've got any questions that you'd like answering just drop them in there and Dan will be keeping an eye on that for us. 

Dan 

Afternoon everyone. Yeah, I'll keep an eye on those question and answers, so keep them coming and then I'll ping those through to Jack and Kim and we can get those sorted for you. Nice to see some familiar names on the participant list as well. 

Dan 

So morning, Charlotte. Yeah, how you doing? It's good to see you all joining. Thanks, Jack. 

Jack 

Thanks Dan. So like I said earlier, this will be our webinar about Tracker Mobile and productivity on site. So the first thing that we'd like to show you is just a quick video that Robin's kindly done for us that he prepared earlier. 

Jack 

It will be a quick video just showing how to easily copy both location data and sample data across sessions. So it'll essentially stop surveyors from having to enter repetitive information and speed up their work on site. 

Jack 

So I'll just play that for you now. It is a feature that you may not be familiar with or you may not have seen in your own Tracker Mobile. So if you like the look of it, just let us know and we can get that enabled in your Tracker Mobile for you, no problem. 

Robin 

I've been having fun today surveying our building here, the E-Innovation Centre, and I've already been surveying the ground floor, so you can see that I've gone into the reception, a corridor, the kitchen and the comms room, except I couldn't actually get into the comms room. 

Robin 

We're now on the first floor, and I'm going to show you how easy it is to copy an entire room, including all of the non-suspect information. Come with me Adam, with your camera. So this corridor on the first floor is the same, exactly the same construction as the corridor on the ground floor. 

Robin 

So I'm going to do new session, and I'm going to say that this is location number six, and here is the trick, or I just need to say I'm on the first floor. So I'm on first floor location six, and here's the trick. 

Robin 

We've configured a previous locations drop down here, so if I tap that and say this is the same as the corridor location number two, you'll see that it's put all of the non-suspect items and materials in without me having to select them, which means all I've got to do is scroll down, there was nothing suspect down there, so I can now just take my new picture of the corridor like so, and that's done it. 

Robin 

That's created location six on the first floor of the corridor as an exact copy of the information in the corridor on the ground floor. Now let's have a look at doing a sample, so a cross reference sample. 

Robin 

So in the kitchen on the ground floor. 

Robin 

We had a sink pad and in this kitchen on the first floor I imagine there's going to be exactly the same material, exactly the same type of sink pad. Let's have a look.

Robin 

Someone hasn't done their washing up. 

Robin 

Yeah, it's exactly the same. So rather than sample this sink pad, I'm going to cross reference it back to the sink pad on in the kitchen, on the ground floor. So how do I do that? Well, this is even easier. 

Robin 

So new session again. Again, I've just got to check them on the right floor. I am, I'm in now room seven, which is the kitchen. So let me just type that in. I could have chosen it from the dropdown. There we go. 

Robin 

So that's in the kitchen. Now I can pull through all of the non suspect information from the kitchen downstairs because it's actually identical. So that was location three. So that has now put all my non suspect materials in, but I'm going to do a suspect item, which is going to be the sink pad. 

Robin 

Again, I could have picked that from the list. I'm giving myself a job to do there by typing. In fact, it's brought it up anyway. There we go. Yeah. So the sink pad. Now, it's a cross reference. So I'm going to use my X approach. 

Robin 

X approaches are cross references. We sometimes configure them as visually similar or if your terminology is different, it might be something different, but in my handset here, it's an X. And that I'm going to say is the same as the same material as a sample I've already taken. 

Robin 

And the sample I've already taken was the sink pad in the kitchen. Now by doing that, what it's done is it's automatically brought forward the correct sample number. I just need to say there's only one of them because the number might be different. 

Robin 

Okay. So let me just scroll back up to where it was. So then I've got one of them, but it's brought through the same product type and surface treatment. I've just got to say what damage it is. Well, this one actually has some slight damage. 

Robin 

So I'll put it's low damage. I need to confirm the recommendation, which is going to be managed and label. And now all I need to do is take the photo. So I'm going to take one photo stood back like I would normally, just to show where in the room it is. 

Robin 

And then the other photo I can take as my closeup. Just to show the damage that I can see. So there we go. And that's done it. So that's using this samples already taken selector, which only appears if, if I just scroll up and find it, only appears if it's a cross reference sample. 

Robin 

So by choosing to say it's a cross reference, I then get the list of samples I've already taken and it brings through all the information that it can into this session, just for me to update things like the condition. 

Robin 

So there you go. So that's shown two different features. We've shown how to duplicate a location using a really safe and easy way in the application. And we've also shown how to do cross reference samples and bring forward the information for a previously sampled item. 

Robin 

Thanks very much. 

Jack 

So I hope that you guys enjoyed that feature there, like I said earlier, you may not be familiar with that feature, you may not have seen it before, you might not see it in your own Tracker Mobile, so if you want to have that feature enabled, just drop us an email or give us a call and we'll get that configured for you, no problem. 

Dan 

I'm just gonna say Jack, it just goes to show, it doesn't matter how many times you practice something or if you've recorded something, there's always something that will go wrong, so that phone call pop in the middle. 

Jack 

Yeah.

Jack 

Right so the second thing that we'd like to show you is going to be searching of sessions on the handset. So I'm just going to switch the screen over to Kim's tablet so that she's able just to demonstrate that so just bear with me just one moment. 

Jack 

And Kim should be able to share the tablet screen now. 

Kim 

Okay, be sharing my screen. 

Dan 

Yep, I can see that. All good, Kim. 

Kim 

Yep, all good. Great. Now I'm going to go on to MDS and here's my Tracker Mobile open. And what I want to show you is up here in the top right-hand corner, next to your session lists, you've got a magnifying glass. 

Kim 

So if I click on there, tap on there, a little box opens up and I can use this for searching, searching of my session lists. So it might be that, for example, is now I'm in the active session list and I want to find all the sessions that I've got that mention the word office. 

Kim 

So I can just start typing it in and the list filters shows me what I'm looking for. And that's great. It's a good way of using it. And one thing I think it's really good and a good way of using this is if you start typing a project number, then you can filter that list by project number. 

Kim 

That's very useful if you've got if you've been sent some reinspection sessions. So you've got them on your on your active session list and you just want to either filter them out or filters adjusting those because you've got other projects out of there as well. 

Kim 

So really good, really good feature of the searching and filtering that list. And it will work not only in the active sessions, also in the sent and deleted. 

Dan 

Kim, we've just got a question come in on that one. Is this available in everyone's Tracker Mobile, or is it something that needs to be turned on? 

Jack 

Is that the search feature, Dan? That's it, yeah. The search feature should be available for everybody as long as you're using the latest version of MDS. So if you can't see that search feature in the app, just check the Google Play Store and make sure that you've got the latest update installed. 

Jack 

But yeah, if you've got the update installed, you should be good to go. 

Dan 

That's great. Thanks for that, Jack. Thank you. 

Kim 

Okay, and second feature that we wanted to look at. 

Jack 

So yes, the next feature was to allow you to speed up the note taking in the app. So this is about essentially using speech to text or dictating to speed up how you take your notes. So Kim will just be able to demonstrate that now from the device. 

Kim 

So I'm in the text field here, I'm in the sample notes box. And as you can see on the keypad, you should be able to see a little microphone button. So if you tap that microphone button, you can then dictate into that box, which is a nice quick way of getting some text in. 

Kim 

So if I do it now, let's add some text here. Tap it again to turn it off and there you go. There's the text in there, nice and easy. And you can just amend it if it gets it slightly wrong or you can make changes or just dictate some more text. 

Kim 

That will work also down in your notes box at the bottom. So for the general notes as well as for the sample notes. 

Jack 

That's right, so you should be able to use that while on site to save you from having to type in any long bits of text in the notes that you would have to type in say repetitively over and over, you should just be able to just speak to your phone or your tablet and have it arrive in the box. 

Jack 

The last thing we'll just show you about speeding up notes is the standard comments now some of you may or may not use this already. But a standard comments are something that can be configured inside your Alpha Tracker system you just search for it on the menu in the desktop side of Alpha Tracker you should find it. 

Jack 

And you can set up your own standard comments and once selected they'll populate the notes fields with a block of text. That saves your surveyor from having to constantly type out long notes that might always be the same such as a no access like Kim selected there because the room was locked because there's no key. 

Kim 

It also ensure some consistency between surveyors.

Jack 

 That's right, yeah. Fixed typos or sort of things and case correction, that type of thing. And that brings us to a close on the features that we wanted to show you in Tracker Mobile for speeding up your productivity. 

Jack 

Dan, is there any questions in the Q&A? 

Dan 

Yeah, we've got one come through, Jack. It's actually from Derek. And Derek's asking, are there any plans in MDS apps to validate data before it gets sent or possibly allow for spell checking within each session? 

Dan 

So that's quite tricky one. 

Jack 

Okay, so spell checking is something that you might just be able to enable on the device when typing into the fields. And they can also use stuff like auto suggest, etc. So just check your device settings and that might be available in terms of validating before the data is sent in that can be quite tricky because some of the validation relies on other data being in Alpha Tracker, especially with cross references. 

Jack 

But that's something that we can certainly take a look into and see if it's a feature that we could look at adding in a future release. So we'll make a note of that. Thanks, Derek. And we'll let you know what we find out. 

Dan 

Great stuff. Thanks, Jack. And I suppose the other thing to mention, Derek, is you probably are aware, but we do offer validator checks. Obviously, this is done after data sent in, but it can be a good way to pick up on things before a report actually goes out to your client. 

Dan 

So if you don't have that, that's probably something worth looking into and just drop us a line if you're interested in that and we can give you some more info. 

Jack 

Great. Any other questions, Dan, or was it just? 

Dan 

I don't know if that's it, that was just the one from Derek on there, so no more questions at the moment. Obviously, if anyone does have any questions, please do send them through to us and we can get back to you on that. 

Dan 

And then if your colleagues are watching this in the recording, which will be made available after the webinar, they can obviously feel free to ping over any questions and yeah, we can get those answered for you. 

Jack 

Real. Thanks, Dan. So we'll leave it there, guys, and hopefully we'll see you on the next Alpha Tracker Tips and Tricks webinar. Thanks very much. 

Kim 

Bye.