Inspection Sync FAQ’s & Your Roadmap to Streamlining Field Data Collection
Ekotrope’s core mission is to make energy efficiency easy.* Compared to our competitors we believe we have made progress yet, there remains one headache for our users - piecing together all of the software tools that you use to have one simple, seamless rater workflow. We’re introducing Inspection Sync - a major new innovation to seamlessly integrate your inspection software with Ekotrope RATER.
Inspection Sync enables you to seamlessly update energy models with inspection data straight from your preferred inspection app without the bottleneck of duplicate data entry. We recognize that there are dozens of workflows and combinations of tools that you use to manage your business, complete building inspections, and deliver value to your clients.
Understanding how to piece each of these software components together can be a challenge. In this blog, we will outline the types and characteristics of high-quality software as well as common workflows that can be optimized with Inspection Sync, Ekotrope RATER, and other off-the-shelf software.
Most rating companies have 2-3 types of software core to delivering ratings - a business and project management tool, an inspection application, and Ekotrope RATER (we hope you all have RATER 😉). Each of these types is implemented with one or more software solutions (I’m specifically excluding accounting software, HR, etc software that is somewhat more generic to all businesses).
Business/Project Management/CRM Tools
In general, a business and project management tool helps you process leads, keep track of projects/jobs, billing, schedule jobs, HR, and HERS Rating Specific tasks like track QA, equipment calibrations, etc. In order to have the flexibility to automate these processes like select and track QA (let us know if you are interested in doing this in Ekotrope!), dispatch inspections, and other business functions it is critical that these tools have either a scripting environment or built to our industries’ specific needs. Depending on rating companies’ budget and needs we’ve seen the following tools used: Ekotrope (yes!), Salesforce, Google Sheets, Dash, and bespoke solutions.
A capable HERS Rating business management software should be able to connect to Ekotrope via our free APIs in order to link energy models to their respective work-orders, jobs, QA tasks and quotas, and track billing in the PM tool. Without this link, your PM tool can get out of sync with the work completed in Ekotrope.
Figure 1. A simple schematic of how your tools can be connected via APIs such that all tools have access to the same data. Importantly, your CRM or PM tool will need to be able to dispatch pre-filled inspections to your inspection app.
Additionally, a rating business management software should also link to the correct inspection form in a raters’ inspection app to seamlessly dispatch a pre-filled (with the data you want in the form) inspection. These connections allow you to easily manage your business from one place with one source of truth and no duplicate information! Tools built for our industry - or that have scripting ability - will even automate business operations like selecting files for QA, upload energy models to the building registry, copying template energy models and create address specific projects. Tools like Dash have some of these functions built-in. Tools like Salesforce, Google Sheets, Airtable would require writing scripts to automate these processes.
Tell us what tools you use to manage your business! This will help us in the future for creating tools that integrate seamlessly.
Table 1. From our experience, we have observed rating companies utilize these project management tools. We have summarized their connected, scripting, and automation abilities for you. There are many other tools available as well.
Inspection Software
The second piece of a connected and seamless energy rating company is an inspection app. Many rating companies use paper and pencil effectively but, at a certain scale, using an inspection app becomes necessary.
A seamless and painless rating process is now possible with Inspection Sync. Using a connected set of tools (PM and inspection app) you can dispatch inspections, collect or validate building data, and directly input data into Ekotrope without the need for any manual data entry.
Figure 2. Using Ekotrope’s APIs and your PM and Inspection tools APIs you can make a seamless rating experience. It is important that either your PM tool or Inspection app can export to the Inspection Sync JSON format.
This gives them just the information they need (or that you want them to have) while completing the inspection. There are hundreds of inspection softwares on the market. And it seems everyone is willing to build their own. To make successful use of an inspection app it should be evaluated in two ways - input/output capabilities and data collection flexibility.
Input/Output: it should be able to have inspection forms created and exported via API and/or JSON. This is a minimum requirement for tools to be connected. API is definitely preferred. Without this, you will be limited to the tools that are already connected to the Inspection App. This may be okay if the tool is specifically built for our industry, like Dash, EnergySmac, etc. The input ability is critically important because to make a connected workflow with Ekotrope, your inspection app must understand the basic structure of the energy model for which you are inspecting. For example, if you collect data on 15 walls in a home and record that in the Inspection app. In order to push those updates to Ekotrope, the inspection app must communicate to Ekotrope exactly which walls in the energy model it is updating.
Data Collection Flexibility: Raters use inspection forms for a few uses:
Make sure you don’t forget to collect important data - a checklist
Record data (text, numbers, photos, drawings)
Generate action item reports to send to stakeholders
Verify home is built to specification and record differences
Basic code/program compliance checks
Few, if any, softwares complete the desired combination of input/output and data collection flexibility functions for your specific expectations and needs. This is especially true for data collection flexibility. Some of the highest-powered tools that support data collection flexibility become excessively complicated to set up. Other easier to set up tools will have more specific use-cases and offer less flexibility. We recommend mapping out how you normally complete inspections, understanding your needs for data collection flexibility, and selecting a tool that meets your needs in most cases while keeping in mind the input/output requirements are most important for a connected and seamless rating workflow.
Most importantly, to sync with Ekotrope using Inspection Sync, the inspection app or PM tool will also need the capability to export an Inspection Sync JSON that is used to update energy models in Ekotrope RATER. This JSON needs to follow the format as described in our support documentation.
Table 2. We have seen rating companies use these various inspection softwares.
A seamless rating process requires connected tools that communicate via API and export to the InspectionSync JSON format. When planning your roadmap to becoming a streamlined-connected-digital rating company you should evaluate your software solutions with this in mind. Inspection Sync enables you to seamlessly update energy models with inspection data straight from your preferred inspection app without the bottleneck of duplicate data entry. Reach out to us and tell us about your process and your interest in using the new Inspection Sync feature and we’d be happy to help you navigate this undertaking. As always we are here to support you in this process as we are always looking to make energy efficiency easy.
*We have updated and elaborated on this mission recently. See this blog post: Ekotrope’s Codified Mission and Vision Statements.