Author posts Steven Rovito

Field Reports Will Make Your Form into an App in Minutes

The number one reason why people approach us to make a mobile app for them is paper. Every company has their own reason, but none of them miss paper after they’ve finally made the switch. From improving the speed of your workflow, to establishing immediate communication, to going green, replacing your paper forms with a mobile form is going to help you in some way.

At Snappii, we make it a point to equip ourselves with the tools that our clients need, and we’re constantly trying to improve. Although our form editor has gone through self iterations, we believe that the new Field Reports is the most intuitive version of the editor to date. We’re introducing features like an enhanced look, quick-switching through forms and even field mapping, in the easiest to use editor on the market.

Creating an app from scratch can be expensive. However, using our editor, any layman can access the editor and create an entire mobile form with absolutely no coding experience. For the amount of perks it brings, it’s an almost sure-fire way to improve your business.

Improved UI

Our old form editor, while powerful, didn’t look the best. One of the biggest headaches of it’s old design lied in the color of the background of the screen. With a white background, it makes it very difficult to focus on the project for too long. We found it was much easier to see the letters in black, so we inverted some of the colors. We also took away the mock phone to make the preview more relevant to what you would see on your actual device.

Field Reports also allows you to do a few extra features from within the form editor. Publish an app directly from the platform, without having to back out into Express. You can also switch forms directly from inside Field Reports now, so it’s easier to navigate when you’re working with several applications.

New Feature: Field Mapping

Field Reports now allows you to create a mobile form that translates into a PDF of your choice in minutes. When uploading a PDF document with fill-able fields, the editor now automatically creates a mobile form alongside. This mobile form can be altered, and is much easier to use than zooming in and out of a PDF that was intended for desktops.

Previous iterations of our editor had this feature as well,but only Field Reports does half the work for you. Every field that is mapped will be labeled, so it’s easy to go back and forth between the main PDF, and the vertical form you’ll be creating alongside of it. If you decide to add extra fields than the one’s the PDF automatically created, you just need to drag and drop the fields to the vertical form.

It looks better in action. For a better explanation of this, check out the video on the top of the post (will be posted on 7/21).

The Benefit of Mobile Forms

Field Reports was designed to make the conversion to mobile forms as easy as possible. Mobile forms can be used in a variety of businesses, from logs to inspections, wedding receptions and guest check-in’s, they have truely revolutionized the way we capture information.

Communication with a mobile form created with Field Reports is instant. When forms are completed, they are automatically sent to the email of choice, or can be backed up in a cloud-based service. If you ever lose your forms, simply sign onto the Snappii website and navigate to your reports.

 

Snappii is a mobile app development company that has created a platform that allows users to upload a document they already use, and make a complete app out of it. Our platform features the latest features, and is constantly improving in the direction of the market. We believe that any business can have an app, and that creating your own should not be out of anyone’s reach.

For custom development inquiries, please contact support@snappii.com

3 Mobile App Design Mistakes Everyone Makes

For a lot of businesses, apps have become fundamental when it comes to some aspects. We’re willing to bet a company wouldn’t want to go back to doing things with paper and pen after they’ve experienced the flexibility and functionality of Snappii’s apps. We’ve helped businesses all over the world accomplish all sorts of tasks, even when we’ve had to jump through hoops to do it.

Creating and testing that many apps comes with a sort of responsibility. Not only does Snappii have to make sure it’s apps are all working 100% of the time, we also have to keep an eye on competitors and what they’re doing. We see a lot of apps.

A lot of app builders, even the ones that build for huge corporations, fall into similar mistakes when creating apps. While sometimes disguised as being “intuitive” or “functional”, it’s easy to give software too much. The three reasons here will give you an idea of what I mean by that.

Keep it Simple

People like to make things useful. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just in our nature to make tools. Specifically tools that we can use to better our day-to-day operations. A carpenter wouldn’t be able to get much done without his hammer.

But, there is a point of excess when it comes to functionality. The app creator should remember the original purpose of the app. Once you’ve started to deviate from that too far, you’re better off making another app.

We once had a customer that wanted to combine a taxi delivery service with a pizza delivery service. He figured since cars were driving around anyways, they would be able to pick up pizza and deliver it in between houses. While it would be great, think about the amount of confusion that could take place in the app? You’re begging for your users to hate you if you make things too complicated, and that goes for any app, business or not.

People enjoy using intuitive products. When the shoe fits, you wear it. When an app works the way you intended, you use it.

On-board properly

If you can’t seem to make the app as intuitive as you want, there’s always the idea of offering a good tutorial at the start of the app.

There’s a couple different styles for this. One style is a series of popups right when you sign into the app for the first time. They give a brief overview and provide pictures of possible things a user might see in the app.

Another idea is to slowly introduce new concepts and ways to use the app as the user explores it for the first time. This can be done in the form of notification bubbles, messages, and more.

Be tasteful with your advertisements

You don’t have to accept and publish every single advertisement that offers your channel some money. Picking advertisements that resonate with your business could go a long way in receiving funds for ads.

 

Using Snappii’s platform, one can build and customize an app from scratch to suit their personal business’s needs. If you would like to submit a custom request, please email support@snappii.com. You can also try out the Snappii Labs by clicking here.

 

Fire Inspections Apps for Beginners

There’s apps for everything nowadays. To even think that computers once needed CD’s to get software seems like a foreign concept. We’ve gotten used to having a problem, going into the app store, and within seconds having a solution. So maybe you own a Fire Inspection business, and you’re looking for ways to maximize every hour of everyday. You want solution that’ll allow you to pull up any invoice, even ones from years ago, right in your pocket. The ability to pull up literally any form in your repertoire, right in the palm of your hand. You probably found this article by typing in “Fire Inspection apps”, but a lot of apps are very similar when it comes to any sort of inspections. They usually work the same. A user logs into the app, then clicks into a form. The form is a direct reflection of the normal form used in inspections, so most employees will already know how to navigate through it. You can also save time by using small shortcuts like drop-downs and radio buttons. You complete the form, send it off to the boss (or whoever) and you’re done.

We do the same thing now with pen and paper. It just takes way longer, requires the individual to carry around multiple documents (sometimes folders full) and runs the risk of being damaged. 15 years it ago, it was understandable why it was out of arm’s reach to make software for your business. But Snappii has been working since 2012 to change that notion.

Fire Inspection Apps

One of the features that Snappii offers is the ability to test-drive apps without spending so much as a penny on our platform. By going to the app store (both iTunes and Google Play), and looking up the Snappii catalog, you can download demo apps for virtually all the functions that Snappii can do.

For Fire Inspections, the app features a generic form. This form can be modified to fit your needs, and we can even make it resemble the form your business already uses. Just email support@snappii.com a copy of the form, and we can get you a quote in as little as 48 hours.

Getting your app customized also gives you a few other benefits, such as the opportunity to add your own logo and branding. You can also make user types to restrict access to certain parts of the app. There’s even ways to capture where the form was filled out, without informing the person that’s filling it out. No uncertainty about employees missing their shifts, and peace of mind that every employee accurately filled out all the information for each and every log.

 

Fire Inspections just scratch the surface on what Snappii is capable of. We have apps for all sorts of business’s. If you want more information about what sort of apps we cover, see for yourself in our catalog. Remember all apps are available in both Android and iOS.

 

Snappii Builds Apps the Fastest

Generic apps on the app store seldom work the way you want them too. Let’s be real: there’s a lot of garbage floating around in both markets that was coded as a way to make a quick-buck and cash in on the free marketing provided by the app stores. It’s basically Google for solving problems, with apps out there that can do anything from ordering a pizza to decorating a room. The problem is the quality of these ‘products’ – often shoddy, scarcely working and with little to no support for when you need them most.

For small businesses, it hurts to see the big-names continue to have a one-up by employing the use of apps to take away your business. If you could only build your own inspection app, simple enough that even a child could use it, but functional enough for any job in your business. It wouldn’t have some half-done color theme, or an interface that requires you to be a techie to understand. No, your app would be the best in it’s class, a new standard among apps that everyone would want to use, even people that don’t work for you.

Snappii’s platform allows its users to do just that. With a lightning-fast editor that allows you to drag and drop what you need, there is no limit to the possibilities. There’s no coding required, and you can get started right away. Click here for more info.

For some, that prospect might seem ambitious. Even with our platform, you may not believe that you can create an app to function the way you intended. To remedy this, Snappii also has a team of on-site developers ready to put your app together in a snap. If you’ve built an app before, you know the average waiting time can be months, sometimes years. As the clock ticks, the cost goes up, until you’re paying thousands for something you’re not even sure will work.

But let’s back up a bit. What sets Snappii apart from just a rag-tag team of developers?

Prototypes in Less Than a Week

At Snappii, the last thing we want is to provide you with our idea of a “finished” product, and you bounce us back an email saying “What is this?”. We believe that you should always get what you paid for, and we’re positive that we can do it for less money than anywhere else (and quicker too!).

We’re so sure, in fact, that we will provide you with a prototype of your app idea in less than a week. While it may not have all the features you want implemented yet, we will get the base of the app down and into the palm of your hand for you to play with in less time than it takes to get a quote back from some companies. A week or two after that, you’ll have a complete app ready to turn your company into a well-oiled machine of productivity.

We Have Your Back!

Have an inspection app in mind that you think would make your visits go by way faster? Send us the form. Want to make your construction logs at the end of the day take 5 minutes in stead of an hour? Send us the log. Have an app idea that you think might even change the world? Let’s hear it!

At Snappii, the features that we can implement into the app are basically limitless. If we don’t have something that you were looking for, we can even employ our developers to make it just for you. Best of all, you have a support team that always has your back – we’re open for about 20 hours in total everyday. You won’t get that type of service from any other app shop out there, rogue developer or not.

 

Print Daily Logs from Your Own App

You’d be surprised to find out how often we get the same requests here at Snappii HQ. No matter if the business is building a tower or if they’re just delivering pizza, a lot of them are asking for the same basic functionality when it comes to apps. While nuances like colors, logos and font is widely different, the basic functions of apps remains the same – people are just trying to make things more efficient, and paperless.

Picture your own personal assistant in your pocket. An app usually works by connecting a user interface to your back-end systems. They allow you to perform basically any function that a normal computer program would do, but with the flexibility of living in your own pocket. This offers a variety of benefits, and often times they are ones that no other technology can really replicate. Apps are unique in that they’re much cheaper to build than a full-fledged computer program, yet are powerful enough to perform many of the same functions.

With apps now entering the same realm as DIY websites, it’s more accessible than ever to develop and produce an app that meets your standards. Initially, the creation of an app would have to be done by an expert in the field – a computer techie that knows what they’re doing, and can communicate what is possible versus what you want very well. However, with programs like Snappii, anyone can create an app from scratch to meet their business needs.

Don’t think it’s that easy? Check out the Snappii Labs website for more information here.

Scared to jump into apps? You don’t have to be.

The biggest fear most businesses have when looking into the world of app is the possibility of having to change certain processes to accommodate the app. While this is true, change can sometimes lead to more efficiency. In the case of apps, it also leads to a lot less footprint in terms of paper consumption.

But that doesn’t mean you have to give up certain perks of doing things on paper. Printing reports and logs is completely possible on an app, and in many cases you might end up with a cleaner result than you would have if everything was just jotted on paper.

Almost any job can use this technology.

Take a home inspector, for example. Traditionally, a home inspector would have to go to a house with a bundle of forms under their arm, shuffling to find the right one for every specific part of the home. It could take them as much as a few hours to go through all the motions of checking everything, with as much as an hour spent just writing things down.

Because apps are digital, it gives you access to things like drop-down menu’s and radio buttons. While it may seem like a small addition, each of these fields can save a massive amount of time for the inspector since they no longer have to manually fill this things out. It doesn’t matter if they’re a slow typist – most fields can be filled in with a few taps of the finger rather than writing long elaborate descriptions.

The most useful part of it all, though, is the ability to print the finished log before the inspector even leaves the parking lot. Using technology like wireless printers, one can easily mount a printer to their work-van, ensuring that no matter what, they have an easy way to distribute papers when needed. Also, filled out reports get filed away into the phone (or dropbox’s) memory for later, making looking up reports that have been completed long ago a snap.

While the prospect of creating an app may still be scary to some, there has never been a better time to take advantage of the technology that is already made. By using platform’s like Snappii, even a layman can create a fully developed app in a few days – not months.

With a 14 Day Trial from Snappii, what do you have to lose?

 

 

Even Construction is Going Digital

 

Software has found it’s way to the work site.

Ten years ago, that statement would have been a joke. Workers were still marching out onto the field holding their giant blueprints, and unreal amounts of paperwork. The thought that all of this information would one day be available on a cellphone was unbelievable. Software was only available to the absolute biggest businesses, and even then it was hardly ever a mobile solution. Secretaries still had to pull blisters from their fingertips after long days of punching in every single field of every single form, one by one.

It goes without saying that things are a bit different now.

We’re starting to see more leaps and bounds in terms of technology. Take the halo light, for example. A helmet that surrounds the user in a 360 degree beam of light so that traffic from any direction will be able to see the wearer from miles away. While this is more of a life-saving technology, it won’t be long till workers are equipped with life-changing technology. And with that, comes the technology that’s going to save you a ridiculous amount of time on field-work, data-entry and, of course, funds.

Mobile forms work by transforming the traditional paper forms, which have become the backbone of your company, into apps that can be downloaded and used on any smart device – from LifeProof protected iPad’s to that cheap Android phone your daughter convinced you to buy. Snappii understands that most business apps were reserved for only the top rung of the ladder, requiring major time and money to complete even a simple application.

But again, things are a bit different now.

Snappii, a revolutionary app-building platform, has made it their mission to equip anyone with the ability to make a mobile app. The simple editor works by asking you what you would like to see in your app, and then allowing you to manipulate it by dragging and dropping where things go. Anything from equipment catalogs to GPS functionality can be configured in the editor. Hiring a team of software developers and programmers to make an app from scratch may cost tens of thousands of dollars, as well as an excessive amount of development time. But with Snappii, the platform takes care of most of the heavy listing. The barriers of entry become stepping stones.

So why haven’t more people converted yet? Fear.

For most construction firms, mobile forms jeopardize the process which built the company in the first place. Having adhered to it for so long, it can sometimes be difficult to transfer what has been a “perfect workflow in the making” for years into a totally different process that involves half of the moving pieces.

However, a lot of problems can be solved by simply digitizing your workflow. Although the idea hasn’t been widely received, the accessibility of software has never been so high. And when people finally do hear about how easy it is, they usually can’t believe their ears.

Snappii aims to redefine the misconception that creating a product for your business is ‘scary’ or ‘difficult’. Rather than solely creating apps unique for businesses, Snappii’s platform allows businesses to snap fields together in a fraction of the time it would take developers to make it from scratch. Using this technology, you can recreate your paper forms in mobile forms yourself, saving countless dollars.

Gif-for-Form-Editor

On average, having an operation run off of paper cost most companies around $160 per employee. Do the math and you can see that there’s a massive cost for something that can be almost completely eliminated. Not to mention the employee time it takes to protect and drop-off the documents. Since everything is digital, finished forms can be mailed back to the headquarters, where secretaries can automatically input the information instead of committing hours to data-entry.

If fear is stopping you from trying out Snappii’s platform, use our free trial to see for yourself how easy it is. There’s no obligations unless you device to publish your app, and you can make as many prototypes as you need to get the perfect piece of software for your business.

If making an app from scratch doesn’t sound like fun, you can also hire one of our developers to leverage the platform for you. Since they would be using the platform we developed, turn-around time will be WEEKS instead of MONTHS, and the cost with surprise you (in a good way). Click here to send a custom request to sales with as much information as you can, and we’ll show you how fast our platform can turn your business around.

3 Form Features to Make Your Job Way Easier

 

Forms have come a long way since the “stone age” of business. What used to be filled out on paper is now filled out on the same devices that we use to manage our lives. This isn’t a new revelation. Big companies have been using handheld devices to fill forms out for years. The problem is just that – only big companies could afford, not only the software, but the actual hardware as well. While big companies were no stranger to purchasing products to expedite certain processes that workers would encounter on the day to day, small companies could never afford the luxury, and were often tied to wherever  their computers were. For people that worked out on the field, or even in a place where a computer wasn’t the most convenient thing to have around, it was a longshot. Creating the software would be expensive as it was, but purchasing hardware for all the employees to actually use the software? Unheard of.

So where did mobile forms come from?

As we cross the digital divide into the technological age, more and more companies are beginning to realize the accessibility of apps in their market. What was the big change?

Smartphones.

Phones were relatively simple not even 10 years ago. You could make calls and text, but having one that would browse the web, provide a GPS and play games for hours wasn’t possible. Until we all began adapting to life with smartphones, the possibility for having a mobile app for the business, even a small business, was never really realized. Now that they’ve coexisted with us for a while and basically everyone has one, it’s a different game.

Many companies use forms for various reasons. Some may use it to expedite a process, some could use it as a check-in procedure for fresh clients that walk through their door. Either way, the idea remains the same. Forms are an accurate, easy way to capture information and archive it in a safe, indexed place where you can go back to find it in a snap. Rather than having filing cabinets bursting with documents, you can simply sign onto the Snappii website, and see every single form a mobile app created through our process.

Forms can be built in a myriad of ways, from uploading a PDF, to rebuilding it from scratch on the editor. There’s a bunch of ways you can save time with shortcuts, but these are Snappii’s top 3 in terms of cutting corners – in a good way.

Drop-downs

Drop-downs are great for making a list of options when you know there’s no much room for change. Snappii users tend to have a lot of drop-downs in their apps solely because of the amount of time it saves to click-swipe-click something rather than fingering each individual letter for something.

For example, say you have a taxi app, and you need to figure out which driver to dispatch to a certain location. Rather than typing a name in manually to see if a driver is avalable, you can make a drop-down of all your drivers and simply click on the one that you need. Any amount can be added to the options of the drop-down list, and most are configured in such a way that if you want to add more options while inside the app, you can do so. Just scroll down to the bottom of the list, and a “New Option” button will be presented to you to do just that.

Once you add an option once, there’s no need to add it again. Our apps are smart enough to know when that when you add an option to the list, it probably means you’ll need it there for next time.

Invisible…but required.

Many of the construction personnel that approach us with an app also ask for a way to quickly scan a document to see if a worker was indeed where they were supposed to be. While the trust system works for some companies, hiring contractors that you’ve never used before can sometimes leave you reluctant to trust.

Snappii remedies this by giving the option to implement a feature to track where employees submitted their reports, without giving the employee any indication that the report will do so. A bit sneaky, but when hiring people outside of the scope of your own company, you can never be too sure.

Text-to-voice in a Snapp.

Finally, probably one of the most requested features that we handle on a day-to-day basis is the text-to-voice option. It’s exactly as it sounds. The user gets to a certain point in the form, and instead of having to manually type what they see, they can just as easily press a button and speak into the phone.

For employees that maybe aren’t so savvy with the phone, this will make their lives exponentially easier. It will also ensure that the app does what it was originally intended to do – make things faster and more efficient.

 

To try out Snappii, head on over to the top of this web-page and click on the “create account” button. Once your account is created, you’ll have a 14-day-trial to try out anything and everything that Snappii offers, from the app editor to the template apps on the Play Store and iTunes.

If you’re interested in having us built an app for you, do not hesitate to call us or reach out to us via support@snappii.com.

How to Code an App Without Knowing How to Code

The world is turning into a place where the layman is king. I can’t tell you how many start-ups have approached us with an app idea, and the CEO knows next to the nothing about actually building an app or a website – even in some cases, a business. Outsourcing has become a thing of the past with such programs like Wix and Squarespace making it easy for people who have little to no knowledge accomplish their goals. Not to long ago, these things took specialist to create – someone who went to school and studied a skill in order to be competitive in the workplace. But just as the old adage says, “the machine will replace the hand”, and in this case, machines are replacing machines.

Similar to the popular website creators Wix and Squarespace, Snappii is a mobile app platform that allows anyone to create an app entirely from scratch. We accomplish this in a similar way, by making the platform intuitive enough that someone can pick it up and use it right away, but powerful enough to meet the demands of our users. To do this, we’ve divided the platform into two separate components – Express and Guru.

Express Mode

Express Mode is a simplified version of our platform, allowing the user to put together widgets that they select from a large catalog of features that we have available on the platform. These widgets can be customized to meet the users needs, so if there’s something that’s close but not quite what the user was looking for, the widgets give a good starting point.

This also makes it extremely easy to test out features, and figure out whether or not it will be useful for your personal business. Since widgets can quickly be added or taken away from your finished product, there’s no harm in adding a certain features and testing it in a real-world situation.

With many other app-shops out there, this can be problematic. If you want a new feature to be added to your app, coders will have to backtrack and go into the application, developing the prototype from scratch in hope that it’s actually what you were looking for. Even with careful planning, the amount of time and money a business can lose by testing things out can be debilitating. What’s more, it’s not something the original user can do themselves – they have to get someone else to create it. Snappii eliminates this need by providing you with the widgets ready-to-go. And with a 14-free-trial, you have more than enough time to determine if it’s something you would like to pursue within your app.

Guru Mode

Guru Mode is a bit trickier, but still accessible by the average user. To put it simple, Guru mode is Express mode, but it allows you to access the back-end of the app to make changes to things like databases, connectors and much more. It functions in a similar way to Express Mode, encompassing a drag-and-drop style of operation. Keeping this in mind, there is still a slight learning curve to be able to work Guru, but the Snappii team has worked tirelessly to bring the absolute best product to the market in this regard.

Guru will also allow you to do some more detailed things, such as changing the shapes of certain buttons, connecting to databases that you may already have and even going so far as to change the font of the text in your app. Because everything is built individually, just like Express, it is easy to test out certain functions, and omit them later if you decide it’s not something you need.

Guru also has access to features like user types, which allow the creator to specify the different users that can use the app, whether they be an admin, or completely anonymous. It can force a user to create a login, capturing vital information for your own business, or allow the user to access the app completely anonymously if you don’t want the hassle of going through the extra step. In a sense, we’ve created the most compatible version of an app builder possible, and all of it is done without an even a line of coding on your end.

Custom Development

And if all of that doesn’t sound appealing to you, Snappii also offers our own developers to create an app for you. Even if the bulk of the app is done through the platform, special cases may employ the developers to create custom software for a particular app. This means that even if we don’t have the exact functionality you’re looking for, we can make it for you.

The first thing that probably popped into your head when I mentioned that is the cost. Hiring developers, especially app developers, can be a costly endeavor if approached incorrectly. What’s more is that you may not have access to those developers all the time. Other projects that are on that particular developers plate may cause their feedback to you to be slow and unresponsive. Snappii remedies this issue by working with an entire team of developers. On top of that, we have an entire team of Quality Assurance personell to make sure the app stays in tip top shape. And even further than that, Snappii offers an entire team of Support that is available (almost) around the clock to help you with.

In other words, Snappii’s got your back 110%.

If you want to try out our platform for yourself, click this link to go to Snappii Labs. If you were more interested in checking out what our developers can do for you, email us at support@snappii.com, and we’ll point you in the right direction. For more information on how an app can literally change your business overnight, check out our various other blogs here.

Best Apps To Improve Productivity

In this day and age, the way you run your business says a lot about it’s success. While there are still a lot of businesses around that get the job done with paper and pencil, the majority of people have made the switch to digital. After all, a business isn’t just about making ends meet – you want it to grow! There’s never been a better time to invest into making an app, especially with companies like Snappii around to help facilitate the process.

What makes Snappii so different from the rest? Snappii has been around since 2012. Since then we’ve done nothing but build apps for customers, back to back, day in and day out. We know a little something about the time it takes to do things the standard, analog way and the problems that that method creates. We also know that our digital solution can literally turn your business around overnight – we’ve seen it happen. More than once, too.

If you don’t believe us, check out our website where you can get some additional information about the entire Snappii process.

If you visited our mobile apps page, you’ve probably seen the incredulous amount of apps we have developed and published onto the market. There’s a lot to chose from, and every single one of those apps can be customized to fit any need. Find the app that’s closest to what you need, we’ll copy it to your account, and you can go in yourself to make the changes. To some, that might sound like too much leg-work. We also have the option of contacting our developers to create the app for you. Either way, it’s much cheaper, and more time effective, than the alternative (hiring a bunch of developers who probably don’t care much about your project).

Because we have so many apps available, I thought I’d take the blog-time to run through our most popular, and probably most useful, apps that we have on the market. Keep in mind that these apps are free for 15 forms a month. For a small fee, you can unlock the app, and for a slight bit more, you can have your own custom version that you control every aspect of.

Construction Daily Log

This has long been the poster-child for Snappii. This app became the most popular for one simple reason – the construction industry had a huge hole in it when it came to solving the “paper” riddle. Many companies flat out refused to do better, and instead kept marching on with their pen and paper. The Construction Daily Log has gone above and beyond to make this process as easy as possible.

Especially with the new features that got announced, like the “Supervisor” and “Project Manager” view. Each of these sub-categories sets the app up for the appropriate person, allowing the Project Manager to have an overview of all the projects at hand, and the supervisor to have an overview of all the employees at hand. Merging both of these worlds also means that those two individuals will always be up to date on projects. Likewise, if one of the employees that are using the app makes a change, it will automatically inform the higher ups.

The CDL (Construction Daily Log) is professional at keeping everything tidy and neat. Having your logs backed up on to your phone, and being able to search them through search fields alone makes the app worth at least a download.

Construction Photos

A relatively new app to the family, the Construction Photos app allows it’s users to take and manage photos. This can also be done on the Construction Daily Log, but the photos apps is more of a bare-bone’s version of this idea.

The vision was to have an app that anyone can pick up and use without even a minute of training. The app is intuitive enough that if you’ve used an app before, it should be a breeze, but powerful enough to capture the things you need. If you’re having problems filling your safety inspection forms in time, this might be a great solution for you.

And if it isn’t, the next one surely will be.

Inspect Anything

The great thing about the Inspect Anything app is that it’s an extremely generic version of most of our other apps. That might not sound so good on paper, but it’s actual application is basically limitless. It works by keeping things general enough that it can be used for almost anything, yet allows enough of the users own input to still capture specific details.

Again, like all of our other apps, the Inspect Anything app can be modified to fit your needs – and a lot of people use it for that. It works as a great template to start off an app, andfrom there you can have a good idea of what to build next. Our apps aren’t just limited to forms, but 9/10 times that what they are used for. Inspect Anything will introduce you to the form world, while still giving you the flexibility of exploring our other features.

 

Snappii has worked hard over the past few years to bring apps that are not only useful, they’re nearly essential for the business. Once you try it, we guarantee that you won’t ever look back at paper and pencil. For more information about what we can do for your business, feel free to reach out to our sales team, or you can email support at support@snappii.com.

 

 

Create a Daily Log in Under 10 Minutes

I think most people who are heavy into the technology world would be surprised to see how far behind some players in the industry are when it comes to technology. I spoke to a user today who worked for a company who still used paper and pencil to record where hazardous chemicals were moving throughout various warehouses. I didn’t receive much detail about the company, except that this is the way they’ve been doing it for 50 years.

I’ve grown up around technology, so I never really knew a life without it. To think that some people are so scared of it that they would continue to resort to primitive methods in order to do their daily business seems crazy. Especially with how accessible apps are nowadays. These guys could have gone to the Snappii Lab and had an app in 10 minutes that would have done everything they needed to do.

How would one go about doing that? It’s simple. All you need is a scanned copy of the form that you use on an everyday basis. Make sure it’s as symetrical as possible – it’ll make things easier later down the line.

The Snappii App

Before anything, let’s take a moment to download the Snappii app. The Snappii app is going to be our prototype mechanism. When we’re done customizing our form, we’ll use the Snappii app to access our accounts and pull up whatever we’ve been working on. The Snappii App is available on both Android and iOS, and takes a few seconds to download.

Trust me, it’s going to make this whole process much easier.

If you haven’t signed up with Snappii, go ahead and do that now. There’s a sign-up button on the top of the web-page that you can use.

Once you have the Snappii App and an account, it’s on to the next step.

The Snappii Lab

To access the Snappii Lab, check out the area just below the account options on the top.

The Snappii Lab is the environment/platform that we use in order to build every app that you see on the market. We leave it open to the public so that users can mess around with their apps themselves. In special cases, our developers will custom build pieces of an app for clients.

Anyways, once your into the editor, you can go ahead and pick a template if you want. I’m going to skip templates just for time-sake, but if you want to check them out, here’s the link. Templates are basically apps that can be customized to fit your needs. They’re a good starting point if you want to add more features to your apps besides the ability to do forms.

Next you’ll pick a color. You can always change it later so don’t worry to much about it if you can’t decide.

Then you’ll enter this screen. Previously called Express Mode, this is the basic version of the tool Snappii uses. Guru mode, which you can flip to at the top (but you really shouldn’t) is the “hard-mode” of the platform. You can do more stuff, but the learning curve is a lot steeper.

The button you’re looking for is the one at the bottom. It says something like “+New Form”. Looks a little like this:

Click that, and then you’ll be taken to the Express Form Editor. This is where all the magic happens, and will probably be the screen you end up looking at the most in your 10 minutes.

The next step from here is to just upload your PDF by clicking “Load PDF” at the top. If you did it right, this guy should come up:

Once your PDF is in the mock-phone, you’ll have to grab the fields from the left-hand side of the screen and drag-and-drop them onto where they belong on the form. Most fields will use a text or number input, but once you get used to the different mechanics, you can get creative and use things like drop-downs and radio’s. For more info on our Form Editor, click here.

When you’re done, it’s time to “Save and Run”. Pull up the Snappii app on your phone that we downloaded earlier. Log-in using the same credentials you used on our website. You’ll see a screen with a list of empty spaces (because you only have one app!). Click on your app at the top of that list, and you’re done.

 

Hope this little tutorial helped you out. Remember that you have 14 days to trial Snappii’s software before you have to make any sort of commitment.  If you have any questions, feel free to contact support@snappii.com or use the Live Chat service on the side. We’re usually around.

 

The New Construction Photos App

In the last blog, I spoke about the new Construction Daily Log, an app that basically eliminates any hitches in communication between project managers, and their coworkers. The app works by organizing as much data as possible before actually starting the process of putting together the logs. This allows for swift and accurate completion that can all be done from the same device most people have in their pockets all day.

While we liked this idea a lot, we realized that the market has yet another necessity for an even more simple app. Even with the speed and efficiency of the Construction Daily Log, it still takes users some time to fill out all the elements of a daily log. In many cases, all of this information is not that necessary. So we took it one step even further.

The Construction Photos app is an app just for that – it takes pictures of your construction project, archives them and gives you the option to send it to other emails. That’s it.

By keeping the app completely clutter-free, we made it extremely easy for you to go in, take photos, send what you need to send, and get out. Simply put, it’s our most efficient app we’ve built yet. However, just like all of our other apps, it’s can be completely modified to fit a specific businesses processes.

Apps built on the Snappii platform have the unique quality of being able to be customized on Snappii’s platform. Snappii Labs, our open-platform that is used to create apps, allows our developers to modify the app to perform almost any function. Over the years, Snappii has developed a catalog of different apps that sample this technology, which can all be customized upon a clients request.

Although the Construction Daily Log was one of our original apps, and we have a special bias towards it, we all had to admit that the Construction Photos app could also be an invaluable tool for companies. It went through many test phases, and we even put it in the hands of construction workers to test it out. We finally think it’s ready to shake the industry.

I’ll take you through a little tour about the different features we’re using throughout the app:

 

Remember, all Snappii apps can be fully customized to fit your needs. If you like what you see in the Construction Daily Log app, but would still change a few features, feel free to reach out to our Support team and we’ll point you in the right direction to realizing your app. You can contact us anytime at support@snappii.com.

The New Construction Daily Log

Snappii has gone through many changes in 2017. Now that we’re at the mid-way mark, we finally feel like it’s time to start summarizing all the extensive upgrades we’ve given to our products – some of which you won’t find from any other app company, big or small.

Apps built on the Snappii platform have the unique quality of being able to be customized on Snappii’s platform. The system, which is open to the public via Snappii Labs, allows our developers to manipulate the app to do virtually any job. Snappii has a myriad of apps available on both the app stores, which can be plugged into this system and modified down to the font.

The Construction Daily Log was one of our original apps, and the first one to get popular by a long-shot. Over the years, it’s gone through many transformations, some of which were better than others. But, we’ve been receiving feedback, putting it into action, and analyzing the results, and we firmly believe that this is the best version of our product yet.

I’ll take you through a little tour about the different features we introduced:

For starters, the history feature is a great new addition to the kit. This means if you need to assign multiple, similar work orders to the same employees, you can cut the amount of time it takes in half.

If we scroll a bit further down, you can see we also added a new weather feature that uses your phone’s GPS capabilities to pre-fill all of the information.

You also have the option to list off if there’s been some sort of delay for the day. The final report will have this information relatively close together, which is why we separated every section per-screen. In the next screen, you’ll be able to specify the details of the incident.

There’s two options for capturing details. One can be done by simply clicking on the box and typing, as you would a normal window. However, if the user has their hands tied and can’t really type (we hear gloves are a pain to type with), they can just press the mic button and speak. The program will automatically change the words to text, which will still show up on the final report. Yes, your phone can do that.

The final screen is to add expenses from your project:

Pressing ‘add new’ will take you to a screen where you can edit the amount of hours a particular thing or person was utilized, and the app will automatically make the calculation for how much it costed. The final screen summarizes all of this data in a neat, easy to see format:

Another upgrade to the old CDL is that you can choose who you send the report to, and the app will also keep a history of those names for you. We’ve tried to minimize the amount of typing all throughout the program.

Probably the most useful addition, though, is the new “Project Manager” view.

This allows you to see all the moving parts within the app at a distance. You can check on your superintendent list, which allows you to specify your superintendents by name, company and email of your contractors. Have too many and don’t want to write them all into your phone?

Download the sample Excel document and plug your employees into the labled boxes. Then up-load it back into the app and your whole list will be there waiting.

 

My projects allows you to go back and see completed projects, meaning all your invoices are in your pocket, and not crowding up the main office. If you ever need to print one of the invoices, you can wirelessly print with a Wi-Fi enabled printer in your vicinity (most printers these days have Wi-Fi if you didn’t know).

Project Reports will give you live-updates on projects as they come. If someone changes so much as a decimal, you’ll be informed right away.


The last one, Dashboard, has been a highly requested feature as well, allowing the user to quickly tap in and out of their projects to see, at a glance, where all the moneys going. There’s also the option for pie-charts and fancier graphs if that’s what you’re into.

 

Remember, all Snappii apps can be fully customized to fit your needs. If you like what you see in the Construction Daily Log app, but would still change a few features, feel free to reach out to our Support team and we’ll point you in the right direction to realizing your app. You can contact us anytime at support@snappii.com.

 


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