Changelog

Follow up on the latest improvements and updates.

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Mould Inspection Template
We've teamed up with one of the world's leading mould specialists, Nicole Bijlsma, to create a one-of-a-kind mould inspection template for Flow Mobile Surveying.
You can learn more below...
Mould: An Industry with Limited Guidance:
🦠 Mould Inspection is an industry with little guidance.
In Nicole's words:
"It's a bit of a dog's breakfast out there."
The lack of guidance means that inspectors are often left to themselves to try and figure out the best approach, and many believe that simply fogging a building will fix all of the homeowner's problems. So, there are lots of cowboys in the industry...
However, Nicole believes that remediating mould in buildings needs a multi-pronged approach, incorporating data from tools like thermal imaging cameras and moisture meters and obtaining a detailed history of the building and its furnishings.
This template, created with the help of Nicole, offers a standardised approach to inspecting water-damaged buildings so you can present your clients with enough data to justify taking action and fixing the issues.
Learn More About This Template:
Watch a full walkthrough of this template below:
Learn about the approach and insights behind this template:
👷 Do You Offer Mould Inspections to Your Clients?
Get in touch for a demo to see how you can create mould inspection reports in minutes. Contact andrew@flowmobile.app for further details.
Please Note: This template has been designed for the Australian market. But if you want to use it outside of Australia, let us know, and we may be able to adapt it to other parts of the world.
Two major dashboard updates in a week; what's going on?
The dashboard job search has remained unchanged since the early days of Flow, so an overhaul was long overdue; now, that day has come!
The old search boasted excellent features like typo tolerance and chained search queries. But you couldn't use it to find jobs for specific dates. And we recently introduced Tags to help you categorise jobs —but what use is a tag unless you can search for it?
So thank you, Old Search, you've served us well these last couple of years 🙏 But the New Improved Search will take it from here.
Here's a preview of the new search in action:
search_by_tag
Since this new search is live, you can try it yourself :)
Search examples:
🔍 To get the most out of the new search, you'll want to start tagging your jobs with some helpful information. Check out my guides to managing tags and these tag suggestions —they're just suggestions, though; you should use whatever tags are right for your business.
Here are some searches that are now possible:
--
Search > Urgent jobs:
[requires tag: 'urgent']
image
--
Search > Jobs for a Branch or Office:
[requires tags: 'branch:{name}' or similar]
image
--
Search > Jobs for a Job Type:
[requires tags: 'commercial', 'residential', or similar]
image
--
Search > Jobs for a specific Date:
date_search
--
Search > Jobs for a specific Month:
image
--
Search > Jobs overdue a Re-inspection:
[requires a 'reinspect 12 months' tag or similar]
reinspect
--
I hope the new search features make your day-to-day life easier. Especially those administrators struggling with scheduling right now. If you have any feedback on this new feature please get in touch.
Paul and the Flow team
paul_nyz_smile_small
dags
Several of our larger clients have been struggling with scheduling recently.
As they've grown, they've experienced some painful challenges with managing and assigning jobs to staff. To solve this problem, we're working on Advanced Scheduling —that's coming next— but in the meantime, we've released a new feature, a bandaid of sorts, the ability to
Tag Jobs
.
So, why should you tag jobs?
Tagging jobs improves scheduling by making it easier to prioritise jobs. And besides scheduling, there are many other benefits to tagging jobs, too:
✔️ Makes jobs easier to find.
✔️ Communicate important job information to our team.
✔️ Categorise your jobs in sensible ways.
How to start using tags
  1. Start by creating some tags —the tags you create will depend on your internal processes, but I've created some tag suggestions here to help you get started.
  2. Assign the tags to jobs.
🚀
PS. We're also adding the ability to filter by tags in the jobs list soon. So tags will become even more powerful; stay tuned!
I hope you enjoy this feature; if you have any feedback, let us know 😊
Happy tagging,
Paul
Have you seen the new Dashboard (1)
We've released a
new
Flow Mobile Dashboard. It has a
tonne
of updates which we'll discuss in later updates.
Don't worry about
big changes
it's largely the same; Imagine coming home to find it's been cleaned, had a fresh coat of paint and all the little jobs have been done. Dripping tap? Fixed. Wobbly chair? Replaced.
Now we're reviewing and updating our knowledge base articles with new screenshots and updated instructions. We'll be reaching out to a few customers to see if they've used the new Dashboard, and what feedback they have. Feeling eager to discuss? Give us a call!
If you want a rundown of the changes, I made a fun thing.
Yes, I'm a massive nerd. No, I'm not sorry.
David King
🧯 Hold onto your fire extinguishers, everyone!
We've expanded Flow's template library with a new template — Fire Risk Assessments.
Fire Risk Assessment v5 (1)
After several attempts to create a flexible and usable Fire Risk Assessments template, we're happy to say that we've created something that hopefully ticks all the right boxes.
This new template is aimed at UK-based surveyors who carry out Fire Risk Assessments and follows the original UK's PAS 79 standard. And the best thing, the template is flexible so we can configure it to use whatever standard you use or your own best practices.
PS. For anyone reading this post thinking, hey, I already have a Fire Risk Assessment template, what's this all about? You're one of the few users we gave access to an early version. This is a newer, improved version. So get in touch if you want us to upgrade you.
On
Friday 3rd Feb
at
2pm
:
Flow co-founder Paul King will be running an online
Data Collection Masterclass
webinar. In this webinar, you'll learn some of the advanced data collection techniques to speed up data collection on-site.
Paul will demonstrate time-saving features such as:
  • Copying items
  • Deleting items
  • Copying multiple items
  • Editing multiple items
  • Marking items for review
  • Adding presets
  • Quick Fills
  • ...and more
Webinar spots are limited, so if you're interested, please register using the link below. And feel free to invite anyone else on your team.
Register your attendance below:
Add a heading (5)
In v.1.0.77 of the mobile app, we've introduced Quick Fills for faster data entry. And we can now overlay timestamps on your photographs.
Quick Fill
This feature – available on templates that have been specially configured – allows you to complete multiple fields rapidly on a form. And it's a great way to ensure consistent data entry across your team.
Quick_fills_for_Forms
Timestamps on Photos
In v1.0.77, we now capture the date and time you add photos to inspection records. So we can overlay this information on top of photographs on your reports.
Displaying timestamps on photos is helpful if you want to understand the sequence of events or confirm when surveyors inspected items. It also helps you comply with industry standards, such as asbestos four-stage clearances, where the HSE stipulates that you must show this information on photographs.
🔥 Upcoming legal requirement for fire doors
Did you know that in just a few months, new legislation in the UK around Fire Door Inspections comes into effect?
January 23rd, 2023 is a significant date in the world of fire doors – on this date, quarterly inspections of all fire doors in the common parts of buildings over 11 metres in height becomes a legal requirement.
Under the new Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, Responsible Persons are legally required to:
  • Undertake quarterly checks of all fire doors (including self-closing devices) in the common parts.
  • Undertake annual checks of all flat entrance doors (including self-closing devices) that lead onto a building’s common parts.
📄 New Fire Door Inspection template
We've created a new template that follows standard inspection practices for anyone who currently does fire door inspections.
🔓 Want access?
If you want access to this template, please raise a support ticket, and we'll add it to your account. The template is still being battle tested, so we'd really appreciate any feedback you have so we can tweak and improve it.
🙏 Special thanks
A special thanks to Summit Environmental, Bellspire, and Lincs Property Services for helping us create this new template, we couldn't have done it without you guys!
Enjoy the new template :)
Paul
📱 v1.0.76 of the mobile app lets you Preview, Create, and Share PDF reports directly from your mobile phone or tablet
Create_PDF_Reports_on_the_Mobile_App
Until now, it was only possible to generate PDF reports from the dashboard. Now – assuming you don't need further information to complete the report – you can issue inspection reports on-site.
This is a long-awaited feature that many of you have voted on. And I'm sure a few people punched the air in joy when they spotted the new
View Report
button, especially long-term users, you members of the "old guard" 💂‍♂️ – I know I did an excited little dance.
Being able to issue reports on-site will make you well-loved by contractors in a hurry to start construction, removal, or demolition works.
EDIT: We're back online! Let us know if you have any issues with Job search.
Our search provider (Algolia) is having some issues, we're working with them to roll out a fix.
Firstly, don't worry about lost data - everything is saving correctly in our database!
That said, the Dashboard Jobs screen isn't showing the most up-to-date information. So new jobs might not show, and updates to jobs won't be reflected in this view.
Sorry for the inconvenience, we'll let you know when this has been addressed.
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