Getting started: your first report

From signing up to a report in your client's hands takes an afternoon: set up the company, bring your own report form or take one of ours, add a client and a project, write and issue a report, and invite the client to the portal where it lands. This topic walks that path and says where each setting is.

What happened when you signed up

On Create your account you chose how you will use NDT Intact:

• A company: you and your colleagues issue reports under the company's name. You said what the company does, and that chose the apps you were offered.
• Independent technician: a personal organisation, just you. It becomes a company later, in Settings, Organisation with Turn into a company, and your reports, clients and portal stay as they are.

You also chose Where your files are kept: the hosting region for report PDFs, scan data and uploads. It cannot be changed once files are stored.

The first member of any organisation is its owner and a technician, so you can write its first report at once. Untick technician on the Team page later if you do not inspect yourself. A new company starts on a fourteen-day trial of the Team plan, with no card asked for; see plans and billing.

The setup wizard

After sign-up, Set up your company takes three short steps, each saved with Save and continue and the last with Save and finish. Skip for now leaves any of them for later; everything here is in Settings afterwards.

1. Contact details: address, phone, email and website, and what your clients see of them. Tick Show these contact details in the portal to print them at the foot of every portal page, and Show clients who does their job to let a client see which inspector is on their request, with their email and work phone.
2. Logo and colour: on the client portal, where your clients open their reports and raise requests.
3. Methods you offer: every inspection, testing and survey method you do. Only these are offered on your forms and your clients' request form. A method the list lacks is added as one of your own.

The Getting started page

Getting started lists seven steps and ticks each one as soon as your company's data says it is done: you never tick anything yourself. The dashboard carries the same card with Continue until every step is done.

1. Set up your company: the wizard above.
2. Bring your own report form: Start your report form opens the template designer, where you upload the Word, Excel or PDF form you use today for AI to read, build it by hand with the form beside the page, or start from a blank page. Or choose Use one of our templates: the library holds 23 templates covering welds by every common method, thickness and corrosion, materials, coatings, pressure tests, tubes, CP surveys and visual and lifting examinations; in the library, make the one you choose the default for its method. See your own report forms. Reading your form with AI needs an owner to choose Switch on AI reading, or to switch it on in Settings, AI; see AI.
3. Put your name on it: your logo and colour on the portal, if you skipped them in the wizard.
4. Add a client and a project: reports, files and the tracker belong to a project of a client. See clients and projects.
5. Issue your first report: below.
6. Invite your client: free portal access to their issued reports, shared files and requests. See the client portal.
7. Invite your team: technicians write and sign, reviewers countersign, admins keep the registers.

Done with the card? Hide from the dashboard takes it off; the page keeps its address, and Show on the dashboard again on it brings the card back.

The dashboard

The dashboard is where the sidebar's Dashboard opens, and what each person sees depends on their roles:

• Reports awaiting review: for a reviewer, the reports they can review, the longest waiting first; for a technician, their own reports waiting for a reviewer.
• Open inspection requests: raised by your clients or your staff, until a report answers them. See inspection requests.
• Expiring soon: calibrations of equipment in service and certificates of current staff that run out within your warning window, or already have, with links to all of each. See equipment and personnel.
• Storage: what is used against your plan: project files, issued PDFs and documents read by AI.
• Documents, where the document library is in use: what you are asked to read and confirm, reviews due within a month, and drafts to approve.
• With the Operations module on: Jobs today, Assignment warnings, Not ready for upcoming jobs, and Open my day.

Your first report in ten steps

1. Have a template: your own, published in the designer, or one of ours made the default for its method (your own report forms).
2. Put your instruments in Equipment with their calibration, and your certification under Personnel. The checks before issue read both (equipment and personnel).
3. Add the client, then a project under it (clients and projects).
4. On the project, choose Start a report: pick the Template for a new report (your default comes first) and, under For an inspection request, the request it answers if one is waiting.
5. Fill in the sections. The outline on the left marks each Complete, In progress or Not started; everything is saved as you type (writing a report).
6. Check the report's languages, from the project unless you choose Change report languages. Free text is written once; for each other language AI drafts it and a person confirms it before issue.
7. Link the scans and photos behind the results from the side panel, or take a photo with your phone (files and sharing, working offline and your phone).
8. Open the preview in the side panel: the PDF as it would print, one per language edition.
9. Sign. With a review required, Sign and send for review: the report gets its number and a reviewer chooses Approve and issue. Without one, Sign and issue does both. The checks before issue flag what is wrong first and never decide for you (issuing a report).
10. Issued, the report has its PDF in each language with a QR code to its verification page, and it appears in your client's portal.

Before the first report goes out

Four settings shape every report, so set them first:

• Review before issue, in Settings, Reports: none, optional or required. A company starts with a review required, a personal organisation with none; a project may ask for stricter. One person may examine and review the same report is off unless you allow it.
• Numbering, on the same page: how reports are numbered, chosen from a few ways with your own first numbers, and When a report gets its number (how your reports are numbered).
• Report languages, in Settings, Organisation: the languages your reports are written in unless a client or project says otherwise, one to four of them. The interface language is each person's own.
• Paper, on the same page: A4 or US Letter. Set the Time zone there too: it decides which day is today for numbers, dates and expiries.

Who to invite, and with which roles

On the Team page, Invite a colleague sends an email with a link; they choose their own password. A person can hold several roles at once:

• Owner: everything, plus billing and deciding who else is an owner.
• Admin: staff, clients, the registers and the organisation's settings.
• Technician: writes reports and signs them as examiner.
• Reviewer: reviews reports and countersigns them, typically a Level 3.
• With the Operations module on: Planner, Supervisor and Crew member.

A client's people are invited from the client's page with Invite a client user; they are free and unlimited and never count as seats. See team and roles and the client portal.

Where to find help

• The help button, a question mark beside Jump to… at the top, opens the help panel with the topics for the page you are on.
• Jump to… (Ctrl K) finds any page, setting or record by name, a report by its number, a joint by its identifier.
• In your own menu at the foot of the sidebar: Help opens the same panel, Write to support writes to us by email, and What's new opens the list of what changed, newest first.
• Finding your way describes the layout, and what the statuses mean every status a report, joint or job can have.