TOPIC: Addition to Software Suggestions

I would like to be able to select ratings feature and have sections that can be selected to not have ratings. I have a section called Inspection Conditions and if using ratings it looks like heck. I do not want to use as a document.

Maybe add the feature at the selection print order and be able to deselect the ratings feature.

Would also would be beneficial if ratings could be deselected for separate panels as well. For my limitations in each section. I can eliminate the need for the limitations by just adding comment within each cabinet.

Hi Dave,

Is there a reason you can't use a selection panel? They don't have ratings.

Yes, I use the selections but it moves everything to the right and it looks really lousy. One of the reasons I do not use the ratings.

Hey Cameron-
Serge was right about you-you are one creative guy when it comes to template setup.  The selection panel idea is very interesting.  For a work-around how about I have one selection panel which contains all of my comments, and one damage panel which duplicates all of those selection panel comments, or at least the majority of them likely to make it into a summary because of health/safety or significant deficiency concerns, etc.  Now I can have the best of both worlds.  In the field I can do a single click and my comment loads in the report just like you said.  The header for that panel would be something like "Observations".  Like I suspect most guys experience, I usually have a lot more non-summary comments than summary comments, and this would save a boatload of black/red clicks.  However, if I needed a summmary comment, I still have my original damage panel with the black/red conventions.  Going to this panel with one red click I can add the comment to the summary. The header for this one would be something like you suggested, i.e., "Important" or "Summary Items". With the Copy/Paste functions it should be easy to reproduce all the comments from the selection panel to the damage panel. I can't see a downside to this approach, can you?

That's exactly what I was envisioning, Bob. I like the idea of duplicating the comments which are inherently greater in their importance. Your comments seem specific enough to use that approach and it's a great practice to limit your liability.  If you have an issue which is important enough to be a summary comment in one house, it is a good practice from a legal standpoint to always make it a summary comment.  That would also somewhat break your comments into two larger categories which may speed your report time up as well.  You might even leave the “Description text” empty in the damage panel and just use whatever separator you currently use so those comments just look like an extension of the other comments, only they are colored red.

The changing of your layout would be fairly quick too, but I would just change a few tabs and see how it works for you during a few inspections. You would definitely remove a lot of clicks.  The only other down sides I see beside the loss of the merge feature would be the auto captioning of photos  using selected damage panel comments, but I say this in good fun and total seriousness, your comments would NEVER make a good caption!  If you are using the damage panel then you would still have the photo slide show available to you.  I can't really think of anything else negative about making the switch, but again, it's the type switch I would test first.

I'm still thinking about your original method of putting the keyword in front of the comments. It sparked another idea I wanted to pose to Dom.  Would it be possible to have a system in the damage and selection panels similar to what HTML language uses to insert "developer notes" which doesn't actually show up on the final webpage?  So, for instance anything you put in between {{ }} or   in the damage panel, selection panel or red/black sections would not print in the final report.  Would that be possible?

Hey Cameron-
It's interesting isn't it? The <<lists>> addition kind of freed up the selection panel to maybe be used as something totally different which you easily seem to have figured out. I would never have thought of that in a million years.  Hats off to you--it's been a very interesting and valuable discussion for me so far.  I guess I should have been an architect--it certainly seems to have worked for you . 

DrBob