TOPIC: Addition to Software Suggestions

Sorry Dave but tell them what to do such as a "vent cover."How do yo repair it? I bet you mean replace. was it missing? What was actually wrong? was it missing? and if so you would simply replace it.

Bob

Are you referring to how the "Repair or Replace" looks on the summary page or to the body of the report as well?  I agree you don't want to sound too "canned" in the comments you use, it helps to have a personal feel to your comments.  But in the body of the report that picture provides a lot of the needed balance you mentioned.  It is definitely "worth a thousand words".

That all being said, I do think it looks less "canned" of the general conventions an inspector uses are more specific.  I tend to use only one per recommendation, but there are times where I want to leave it up to the contractor or give the impression that a particular issue has more than one option available when correcting it. So I do end up saying "repair or replace" or "repair or upgrade" here and there.

I tend to agree with Drew about summaries. The Realtors are always the ones who want them so I'm not terribly concerned about whether they look too repetitive.  It seems the nature of summary pages is that they will look repetitive.  It will always tend to be a whole lot of "Repair", "Replace" and "Safety" and usually it's all RED.  BTW Dom, if you're reading this, that's another reason I'm anxious to see the individual text formatting in the panels happen someday.  I would love to be able to emphasize or color just a few words in a comment, I almost think you lose a little of the pop or eye-catching ability of a comment when the whole sentence is red(or orange or God-forbid...  yellow) instead of just the convention.

• Repair or Replace, weathered areas, poorly sealed, location(s), laundry door
• Repair or Replace, cracked threshold , location(s), front entrance
• Repair or Replace, loose, damaged or missing window screens, location(s),
numerous areas
• Repair or Replace, insect damage, location(s) NW corner trim
Page 16 Item: 6 Caulking & Vent
Penetrations
• Repair or Replace, poorly caulked areas/have all areas reviewed for proper
caulking techniques
• Repair or Replace, damaged vent cover, location(s), dryer
• Repair or Replace, loose vent cover, location(s), mechanical system(s)
Page 17 Item: 7 Exterior Electrical,
Receptacles,
Lighting
• Repair or Replace,

Read the above(count how many words their are) now remove the term "Repair or replace" and recount.

Sorry Dave but tell them what to do such as a "vent cover."How do yo repair it? I bet you mean replace. was it missing? What was actually wrong? was it missing? and if so you would simply replace it.

Generic canned language often fails when using it to speed up the report process because it eliminates actual thought.There needs to be a balance.

I do not believe I need to write a book about a missing or damaged dryer vent cover, I feel the canned comment, and picture is sufficient. I actually have made all the comments in my template so they are my cans.

I did get some good info from Serge from his personal call.

Bob I understand you do not like my stye and that is fine. To each his own!!

Cameron I sent you an email with this template and was wondering if you recieved it?

Yep, Got it!  I looked at it for a couple minutes last night in between doing my taxes, but I want to take a closer look over the weekend.  I realized right away that I already need to update my current template to reflect the new selection panel lists feature.  Thanks for chance to take a look at your work.

Guys:

I agree with Serge that this has been a great discussion.  The addition of a "Macy Merge" along with the new drop-down lists is a huge advance in creating program versatility.  Hats off to Dom and all of you for adding to the development of these cool new features.  Now I need some help.

Being an old engineer, I am totally in Dave Macy's corner on using a narrative approach to the report.  I think we have a real obligation to our clients to be educators as well as inspectors because there isn't anywhere they can get the kind of information we can deliver.  So I try to put it all in my report.  In my opinion, report length isn't so much of an issue anymore because I usually am sending my client an e-file rather than a forest's worth of paper.  As long is there is a good indexing system in the report the client can easily get to any information they want that is contained in the report.

In addition, like Serge has commented on in the past, I live by the ASHI SOP guidelines of reporting on the CONDITION, IMPLICATIONS, and RECOMMENDATIONS of anything and everything contained in the SOP's.  So I have spent hundreds to thousands of hours going through the ITA training manual along with comments in various programs (InspectIt, Home Gauge, HIP) to create a customized list of anything I think could possibly come up in an inspection.  Each comment contains CONDITION/IMPLICATION/RECOMMENDATION.  It's not perfect, and never will be, but my ultimate goal is to someday have a field program that only requires addition of pictures back at the office to create a very customized looking narrative report.  I'll die first but I'm sure you guys will carry on the effort.

The problem with lots of comments is that it takes some considerable effort to quickly find the right one in the field.  So I adopted a KEYWORD/Comment system which I alphabetize in the damage panel to help me locate the right one in the field.  Since my old memory is no longer good enough to know the structure of the actual comment behind the KEYWORD, it helps to have a piece of the comment visible on my screen in order to make sure I have the right one. So I include the KEYWORD and comment for each damage panel comment. 


The problem with this is that when you move it out of the damage panel to one of the Black/Red panels the whole comment (including the KEYWORD) comes over.  This looks pretty tacky in a narrative report--I want the comment, but not the KEYWORD.  So I put the keyword in a drop-down which contains a blank,and select the blank.  This solves the problem, but is really time-consuming.  If I could somehow click on the comment identified by the KEYWORD without having the KEYWORD show up in the comment, it would save me a ton of time. (If frogs had wings...)

I also use Dave's system of conventions rather than the Ratings boxes.  The Ratings boxes don't work very well for me because I like to identify each observation according to my conventions (Repair/Replace, Monitor, FYI, etc.).  The merge feature works well in being able to add a convention to the front of a comment, but it kind of makes the final report look tacky again because the convention redundantly appears at the beginning of each comment.  If there were a way to group comments as a subcategory of the convention it would make the report look a little cleaner.

Dom, would there be a way to add a grouping feature to the black/red panels so that my comment could be grouped according to one of my conventions, i.e., if I choose a comment and my black panel contains my convention, I could click on the convention and the comment would be grouped with other comments under the same convention?

As the last of my two cents, I thousandth the motion for universal text formatting in the software--If you don't want it you don't have to use it, but it sure would be nice to have the option if you were so inclined.

Keep up the good work, all of you
DrBob

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the feedback! I'm not sure what you mean by universal text formatting, can you expand on that a bit?

The Macy merge should be able to handle your grouping of conventions and comments fine. Click your convention, then click all your comments for that convention, Macy merge and voila.

If you don't remember what the keyword means anymore, why continue to use it? You could make the list name the actual keyword with no list items in it. Then you would see the keyword on the master list but it would automatically be removed since there's nothing in it.

Just a few ideas!

Hi Dom-
I guess what I meant by the text formatting comment is the ability to modify any text entries in any portion of the program with most of the standard text formatting options, like bold, italics, underline, fonts, color, etc..  It seems to me in reading a lot of the message board comments that in addition to ease in entering content, which I think you have handled most excellently, that creating versatility in report appearance is a pretty significant issue.  If I could change the appearance of text entries for the sake of emphasis or look, simply by the usual highlight and function (bold, underline, etc.) choice, that this would be a good feature for my style of reporting.

My personal view is that you are way ahead, Dom, in creating the most versatile and professional-looking program out there.  HIP is so intuitive it is almost scary, and your support level is so far above anyone else that everyone should take a lesson from you. Thanks for the support.