Best ArchiSnapper Features

Here are more than 30 cool features – along with info on how to implement them – that will help you get the most value from ArchiSnapper and save even more time. Adopt any you love; ignore any you don’t.

New to ArchiSnapper? Check out this live demo video or the product tours in your online account first.

As always, don’t hesitate to reach out with questions, doubts, or suggestions: support@archisnapper.com. We’re here to help!

And now the list of features. Ta-dam!

Easy field reports and To-Do lists

Checklist based inspections
Punch lists with checklists
Make beautiful reports with your own brand and layout settings
Manage observations tags
To-Do list of observations
Manage units on project level
Options for sending reports
Auto-assign items
Edit reports or To-Do lists from your online account
Merge reports

ArchiSnapper-hacks on the App

Annotate drawings or PDF plans
Add observations directly on a floor plan or drawing
Reuse categories and section from the previous item when adding items on plan
Translate voice to text
Edit, view, sign off or send a field report from the App
Clone settings
Take square photos with your camera
Photo settings

Effective team collaboration in construction projects

Share observations with non-ArchiSnapper users
Schedule weekly emails to assignees, with their pending items
Manage users and work in the same account
Invite assignees to give feedback on open items

Simplified administrative processes

Export reports and photos to Dropbox, Google Drive, FTP or CSV
Request documents from other parties
Integrate with our integration partners

Import contacts from Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook
Manage project photos
Email project contacts and keep track of sent emails
Project planning (Gantt chart)
Manage document tags
Show projects on a map and schedule site inspections
Dashboards and reporting

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Easy field reports and To-Do Lists

Checklist based inspections

A list of predefined checklist items helps you keep an overview of what you still need to review on-site, without consuming your mental RAM. 

Checklists are great for safety and quality inspections for example. You can set up and manage your checklists with the online account, and then review them with the app on-site.

Here is a help doc with more info.

Punch lists with checklists

Some ArchiSnapper users use the checklist functionality for punch list inspections. They set up project-specific punch list checklists, using the categories in the checklist for the different units or areas of the project. Within those categories, they then add the items to review per unit/area.

When working like this you can easily review the items per room or area, and add photos, text, location pointers, and more. 

Here is a help doc with more info.

Make beautiful reports with your own branding and layout settings

Choose one of our templates, and add your own logo, header, titles, and footer. Play with font type, font color, labels, picture size, and more.

Make a good impression with professional reports that have all the necessary details. 

Here you can find an example of a field report generated with ArchiSnapper.

Manage observations tags

You can manage observation tags in your online account. You can then tag observations with these labels.

Example: you could add a tag ‘urgent’ and give it a red color. If you then label an observation as urgent it will show the red tag in the PDF reports.

You can also filter on these tags from the ‘all observations‘ table.

To-Do list of observations

If you’re a contractor and you want to document, manage, and share a list of items, then To-Do lists are what you need.

You can add items, complete with photos, assignees, trades, dates, and more. Show contractors exactly where items are located by placing numbered pointers on plans. Filter and share the lists with all parties so everyone has a clear view of pending items.

Here is a help doc with more info.

Manage units on project level

You can set up different units within a project, eg for every room, apartment, or building in the project. You can then assign these units (“sections”) to items.

Here is a help doc with more info.

Options for sending site reports

Here are some interesting options for distributing a field report or To-Do list:

1. You can choose whether you want to send the full report with all items, or if you want to send each assignee only his own items.
2. You can also choose to include as a separate attachment the floor plans with all numbered location pointers on them.
3. From your layout settings, you can predefine your email template and settings, so you don’t have to write the same email every time you distribute a field report.

Read more about these report distribution options over here. 

Auto-assign items

You can set rules to automatically assign items to contacts, based on the observation category of the item. For example, automatically assign all items for the category of electricity to Jack the electrician. Read this help doc to find out how. 

Edit reports and To-Do lists from your online account

While it is possible to draft and send field reports with the ArchiSnapper app on-site, lots of our users stick with short notes, pictures, and location pointers on-site, and complete the report with more text and details when they are back in the office – using the web platform on their laptop or desktop.

Merge reports (and To-Do lists)

Did you know you can merge different field reports into one? Here is a help doc with more info.

You can also copy items from the To-Do list of a project into a field report and vice versa. Some of our users start the punch list process with the To-Do list and then copy all items into a punch list report (with date, signatures, disclaimer) at the end of the project.

ArchiSnapper-hacks on the App

Annotate drawings or floor plans

For any observation, you can open up a floor plan, zoom in, annotate it, and then save a snapshot that will be inserted as a photo. Here is a help doc with more info.

Add observations directly on a floor plan

When working on a field report or To-Do list with the app, you can open a floor plan and tap on a certain location to add an item with photos, assignees, status, and more.

Here is a help doc with more info.

Reuse the category and section from the previous item when adding an item on a plan

When you’re adding a new item directly on a floor plan, chances are high you want to assign it to the same section (ag unit 3.5) and category (eg electricity) as the previous one. Go to settings in the app to enable this:

Translate voice to text

Talking goes faster than typing. The voice dictation features embedded in iOS and Android are better than most people think, and we see ever more of our customers using this.

Here is a help doc with more info.

Edit, view, sign off, or send a field report from the App

From the ArchiSnapper app on your phone or tablet, you can tap on the project name and then go to the field reports for this project. From there you open, clone, sign, or send any report.

Here is a help doc with more info.

Clone settings

In the app, there are clone settings. You can select whether or not you want to clone the report status, people present, report pictures, and the OK items. About this last clone setting: some of our users prefer to not copy the OK items from the previous report, because they make the report longer and don’t add a lot of value.

Here is a help doc with more info.

Take square photos with your camera

Field reports and punch lists look better with square photos.

Although ArchiSnapper has layout settings to show photos as squares, the best option is to take them as squares. This is a camera setting: for iOS users select ‘square’ when taking a photo with the camera, for Android select ratio ‘1:1’. This setting will be remembered automatically for your next photos.

Photo settings

Here are 3 more settings related to working with photos:

1. Photo size: see settings in the ArchiSnapper app on your phone to tablet (cf ‘Photo size’ in the image above). Small photos will result in faster syncs to the online account.
2. Save photos on your camera roll: this will save all photos that you take with the app on your camera roll, as a backup. See also the settings in the app on your phone or tablet.
3. Date stamp: this is a setting only admin users can manage, via ‘account settings‘ in the online account. This will automatically add a date stamp to all photos.

Effective collaboration

Share observations with non-ArchiSnapper users

Want to share observations with a subcontractor or owner? No problem — you can filter on assignee, item status, creation date, category, or other fields.

Next, you can copy a URL that you can share with third parties (no ArchiSnapper account required), just like you share a Dropbox file with third parties. With this link, they get a real-time overview of the items meeting those filter criteria. 

This help doc shows how it works.

Schedule weekly emails to assignees, with their pending items

Assignees will get an automated weekly email with their pending items. Here is a help doc with more info.

Manage users and work in the same account

If you have admin rights, you can invite new users and assign them to projects.

You can also define users as standard users or as report creators. Standard users can do everything: managing projects with documents, contacts, observation categories, checklists, and report layout. The report creators can only create and edit field reports and To-Do lists, that’s it.

Here is a help doc with more info.

One more related tip: from the ‘account settings‘ page, admin users can choose whether other (standard) users can edit the observation categories, checklists, or layout settings.

Other settings on this account settings page include if you want to show date stamps on your photos, the file name of the PDF reports, and how to display the assignees in the PDF reports. 

Invite assignees to give feedback on pending items

You can invite assignees to give feedback on their pending items.

They’ll get a free ArchiSnapper account in which they’ll see all their pending items. They’ll be able to add pictures or notes to these items and send them for approval when they are fixed. You can check for updates in your activity log, and you’ll get daily summary emails.

Here is a help doc with more info. 

Simplified administrative processes

Backup reports and photos to Dropbox, Google Drive, FTP, Sharpoint, or CSV

You can connect ArchiSnapper to your Dropbox, Google Drive, FTP server, or Sharepoint account. All your PDF reports and pictures will automatically get exported every four hours.

If you have an FTP server you can even set it up so that ArchiSnapper reports and pictures are exported into already existing project folders on your server. You can set this up from here in your online account.

If you want to analyze your ArchiSnapper data, you can do an export to CSV.

Here you can find the links to the help docs on our Sharepoint integration, our integration with Dropbox and Google Drive, and our export to CSV.

Request documents from other parties

With ArchiSnapper you can manage a list of documents to receive from other parties, like technical drawings or as-built plans. They’ll be able to upload the documents directly into your ArchiSnapper account so you can view and approve them.

Here is a help doc with more info.

Integrate with our integration partners

Are you using any of these software tools to manage your projects and administration? By connecting ArchiSnapper to any of these, your projects, contacts, and documents will be imported automatically into your ArcihSnapper account. No more double data input.

Import contacts from Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook

Easy as pie. Here is a help doc with more info.

Manage project photos

We see many architects, engineers, and contractors struggle with organizing their photos. They basically store all their photos for all projects on their camera roll.  

With the ArchiSnapper app, you can take project photos on project level. You can do this by tapping on the project name and then on ‘project pictures’.

These pictures will be stored by project in your safe online account. You can now easily insert these pictures into site reports. And, they will be automatically exported to your server, Dropbox, Google Drive, or Sharepoint – so you immediately and automatically have a backup of all your photos in the cloud.

Here is a help doc with more info. 

Email project contacts and keep track of sent emails

In ArchiSnapper you typically have all project-related contacts available, together with an email address and other details.

Did you know that you can use ArchiSnapper to send your contacts simple emails (without field reports or punch lists)? These sent emails are logged in to your online ArchiSnapper account. Need an overview of all emails sent to a certain contact or for a specific project? Go to the email logs, filter on the project, and kaboom … here you have’em.

Here is a help doc with more info. 

Project planning (Gantt Chart)

A Gantt chart makes it easy to plan, manage, and communicate your construction schedule so everyone’s working toward the same goal, and all parties involved get a view on when they are expected to start and finish their activities.

With ArchiSnapper you can draft a Gantt chart per project, with the different phases and tasks, dependencies, duration, and percentage complete. This help doc explains how it works.

Manage document tags

You tag can your docs and plans with custom labels, like HVAC or electricity. This makes it easy to search for floor plans when using the app on-site. Here is a help doc with more info. 

Show projects on a map and schedule site inspections

If you need to do frequent site inspections for many projects, then this might be useful.

You set up the inspection frequency together with how many inspections you need per project. You can then track the number of inspections done and still to do per project, and you can display the projects that need an inspection during the next X days on a map, so you can group them into efficient inspection tours.  

Dashboards and reporting

The following reports are available from your online dashboard. 

1. The number of site reports per user, per month, per project: check it out in your reports made and sent overview
2. Working with checklists and want to get a view on the number of times each checklist item appears as NOT OK during inspections? Then the checklist NOT OK items over time dashboard is what you need.
3. If you’re using ArchiSnapper to request docs from third parties and you want to keep on overview of which document require some attention, then this docs to receive dashboard is for you. 

Remember, you can also export your ArchiSnapper data to a CSV for further analysis. Or, you can use our API to integrate any software with ArchiSnapper. For more info, check out our API docs, or contact support@archisnapper.com.

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And that’s it. Did we miss anything? Let us know: check our help docs or youtube videos, or mails us at support@archisnapper.com

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