Welcome to Skill Station 1 on the Inspections and Assessments Learning Line! Follow along with the lessons learn how to use Pulpstream. The skills you learn at each station in a line build upon each other, so we recommend completing them in order.
At this station, we will learn how to build a digital inspection process. (In Pulpstream we call business processes work streams.) When you are done with this Learning Line, you will have a work stream that runs on any device.
Skills you will learn at this station:
Creating a Work Stream
Making a data component
Creating forms with checklists
Adding text fields, barcode scans, and geo location
Prompting an inspector to add photos and notes
Capturing digital signatures
Assigning quality scores
Publishing your stream
How do you want to learn today? Follow along with the video tutorials on the YouTube playlist, or read written tutorials.
Video Tutorial:
Let’s begin. Login to Pulpstream and go to your home page. In the top right corner of the screen, you will see a gear icon. Click on that to access your Streams Management area.
On the Your Streams page, click on the blue plus sign to create a new stream.
On this New Stream popup, we will tell the Pulpstream engine what types of information and fields we need in our work Stream. Let’s give our stream a Title. We will call ours “Safety Inspections.”
Let’s add 3 fields and tell Pulpstream what type of information each field will contain. Inspections need locations, dates, and gps coordinates. Click on the “add another field” text to add 2 rows for the field attributes.
In the first title field, type in “Location”. The name field will auto populate. (This is the name that Pulpstream uses on the back end to organize data. It always auto populates. Don’t worry about it for now.) We will enable the inspector to manually type in the location, by selecting “Text Field” in the type pull-down menu. In the second title field, we will type “Inspection Date.” Again the name auto populates. In this type section, select “Date” from the pull-down menu. The third field we will give a title of GPS coordinates; the type will be a text field.
When you're done, the New Stream's general settings screen should look like this:
Click on the Done button in the top right corner of the stream popup to save our changes.
Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve made our first work Stream.
Find it in by clicking on Your Streams. Then go to to the Summary tab. You will see your new, working version. Click on it to see what it contains.
This is your Stream Definition. Your work Stream is defined by the steps and requirements of your business workflow. Streams emulate business process flowcharts.
Notice that you have a variety of options on your Stream Definition Canvas, with which you can customize your work Stream. On the right side of your canvas you will find a catalog of components that you can drag and drop into your work Stream. At this point, you should see a Data Component, a Form, and some basic roles and permissions in your catalog, as well as simple work Stream flowing on your canvas.
On the right side of the screen, under Data Components locate the one called “Inspection.” Hover your mouse over to display the “edit” function. Click on it to edit your Data Component.
Let’s add fields to capture email signatures and enable inspection submitters to add comments about their observations. On the Fields tab, click on the “New Field” button.
In the title field, give it a name. We will call it “Signature of Submitter.” The name will auto populate. Next, we need to tell Pulpstream what type of information it’s going to capture. The signature will be a digital image. That type of information is an image attachment. Select that option in the type pull-down menu. Click on the blue button on the bottom to save changes to the field.
When you are done, the field configuration will look like this:
Next, let’s add our inspection questions. Click on the New Field button to add new data input fields.
There are many types of fields that you can add to your data components. Generally, inspections, audits, and assessments all use checklists. So, click on the type pull-down menu and select checklist. Additional options will appear.
The title field is where you will enter the questions that inspectors will answer. Let's add some. Our first question will be: Has a fire department visited the facility during the past year?
Again, the name field will auto populate text based on what you typed into the title. Later, we will create rules to calculate scores for our inspection results. So let's prepare for that by deleting the name field and replacing it with “ch1.” This stands for checklist item 1. We recommend always replacing the name of checklists in the name field with an abbreviated reference name and a number that displays that question’s placement in the checklist: For example, ch1, ch2, ch3 and so on. This will make calculating scores easier. The Pulpstream engine recognizes field names that start with “ch” as checklists.
In the type pull-down menu, choose checklist. Each checklist field has configuration options. This enables you to give inspectors and auditors the ability to 1) assign an exact score 2) assign a score from the available options. We will enable objectivity here by making all of the answers to the questions yes or no. Put those answers in the Label fields.
For the yes label, assign it a value of 1. Under notes and corrective action select the “Hide” option in the pull-down menu. That will hide the add photos, make notes, or assign corrective action options in the inspection form.
For the No label, assign it a value of 0. In our example, no means something was not in compliance. So, we will require the inspector to add photos, make notes, and create a corrective action to resolve the issue. In the pull-down menus under photos, notes, and corrective action, select “Required.”
When you are done your first checklist question configuration should look like this:
Save the Field. Now, let's add the rest of the questions to the checklist.
Use this list to add new fields and populate your checklist:
Now that you have added the checklist questions to your Data Component, we want to add those to our digital Inspection Form. Throughout Pulpstream whenever we want something available for use later, we will create a data component to store it and make it available to anything in the platform. Before we move on, you may have noticed that 2 of the questions in our checklist have a N/A option in the label.
N/A labels need scores too. We cannot assign those a value of 0, because we can’t have options with the same values. Let's assign these a value of .0001, which is essentially 0 when rounded, but different enough to not create errors.
Now that we have all our checklist questions in the Inspection Data Component, we will add them to the Form. Go back to your Stream Definition Canvas. Find the Form in your Components Catalog. Hover your mouse over the Inspection form to reveal the “edit” function. Click on that to open your form and edit it.
In the Web/ Mobile Layout tab, you will see a page named “General.” Add 3 new pages by clicking on that “+ New Page” button.
Rename them: Preparedness, PPE Requirements, and Submission. Click on the gear under the page title to find the rename function.
Go back to the General Form by clicking on it.
Make all the fields on that digital page required. Hover your mouse over that field. Dotted lines and an edit pencil icon will appear. Click on the pencil icon. In the window that pops up, find the Field Attributes pull-down menu. Choose “Required.”
Next we will edit the Inspection Date field. Click on it to open your field options. Change the default value to “Today.” Make that one required too. (In the Field Attributes, choose “Required” from the pull-down menu.)
Next, edit the GPS Coordinates Field. In the Display as pull-down menu, choose the type of information you want to display. We’re going to use “Geo Location Stamp,” which will auto detect where the inspector is and use their coordinates as a stamp.
While we are here, let's talk about all the options in that pull-down menu. These are customization options that you can use to design your user experience.
1) Text field - This is a default field that enables users to type in a short amount of text.
2) Text area - This will enable the user to type multiple lines of text.
3) Barcode Scanner - Use this to scan barcodes with mobile devices.
4) Geo Location - Pulpstream will keep track of where the user goes as they move around with their mobile phone.
5) Geo Location Stamp - As soon as a form is launched, Pulpstream will auto detect the location and stamp the form with it.
When you use Geo Location stamps, you can customize how the record will display that location on a map in a web interface.
Save your changes and go back to the Inspection Form. Click on the Submission Page. On the right side of the screen, you will see your Available Fields and Data Components.
Drag the Signature of Submitter field onto the form. eSignatures are basically images. We need to tell Pulpstream specifically what kind of image it is. Select "Signature" in the pull-down menu under the Display As section.
Drag and drop the Additional Comments component to complete that page.
Next, click on the Preparedness page. Drag and drop the preparedness questions from your Available Fields onto this page.
Next, open the PPE Requirements page. Drag and drop the PPE Requirements questions onto that page.
Click the blue save changes button to change the form.
We are now ready to publish the stream.
Click the checkin button.
Then click the Publish button to publish the version.
To test your Inspection form, go to the home page. Click on the Submit New Form button to access your Forms Catalog. Select the Inspection Form we created to launch it.
When it opens up, note how the date and GPS coordinates pre populated.
To complete the inspection, either click on the “next Page >>” text in the lower right side of the screen or click on the next tab in the navigation bar on top of the forms.
As you complete the digital forms in the inspection, notice that when an inspector selects “no,” adding photos, notes, and corrective actions will be required.
Congratulations! You have created a custom, digital inspection process.
At the next Skill Station, we will learn how to generate reports from these inspections.
