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Record Technician Findings, notes, and media

What a technician records on a visit comes in three pieces: a Technician Concern (the observed problem, with a severity), findings text (the words describing it), and media (photos and video that prove it). This page covers how to record each one and exactly which of them the customer ends up seeing. Building the checklist itself and marking an inspection complete is Configure and perform Inspections; delivering the results is Send Estimates and Inspections to customers.

Keep one distinction straight from the start: a Reason For Visit is the problem in the customer's words, and a Technician Concern is what your staff observed. They live side by side in Concern Groups and both show under a Service as evidence, but they are never the same record. See Set the Reason For Visit, Visit Type, odometer, and Promise Time for the customer half.

Technician Concerns​

A Technician Concern is one staff-observed issue on an Estimate or Repair Order: a description, a severity of Attention or Critical, and who captured it. In the UI, sections that list them are always titled Technician findings, with the worst severity shown as a chip in the header.

There are two ways to record one:

  • Rate an inspection task Attention or Critical. The concern is created for you, in its own Concern Group, carrying the task's rating and its findings text (or just the task name until findings are written). It stays in sync: change the rating or the findings and the concern follows, move the task back to Good or Not applicable and the concern is removed, along with its Concern Group if nothing else is in it. This is the normal path during an inspection.
  • Type one directly on the Estimate tab. Inside a Concern Group's editor, a Technician finding row takes a status (Attention or Critical) and findings text; both are required. Use this for something spotted outside any checklist, or on an Estimate, since inspections only exist on Repair Orders.

Concerns do the same downstream work as Reasons For Visit: each one sits in a Concern Group, and Concern Groups are what you link Services to. A Service linked to a Critical concern (and no Reason For Visit) shows under Urgent on the Estimate tab and the Customer Portal; Attention-only services fall to Recommended. An unaddressed Concern Group is the service advisor's to-do list, so a concern with no Service linked yet is not lost, it is waiting. See Build an Estimate with Services, labor, parts, Sublets, fees, and discounts.

A task newly rated Critical also fires a "critical finding" event that Automations can trigger on, so a shop can, for example, create a task for the service advisor the moment a technician flags something serious.

Findings text​

Findings text is the note on one inspection task result: what you saw, measured, or heard. On the web Inspections tab it is the findings field beside each task's rating buttons, and it autosaves as you type. On the mobile app it is the text field on each task's screen, with an add-finding shortcut on every row of the inspection overview.

Write it for the customer. When the inspection is customer-visible, the findings text is exactly what prints under that item on the customer's inspection report and portal, next to its rating icon: "Front pads at 2mm, metal-on-metal soon" reads well there; "cust declined last time, upsell" does not. Notes that must stay internal belong in the Service's Internal notes or on the Repair Order, not in findings text.

There is no per-task internal note. One task, one findings text, and it is customer-facing whenever its inspection is.

Photos and video​

Every inspection task can carry photos and video clips, and they are the most persuasive thing a technician produces all day. A customer who has seen the cracked belt rarely argues about the belt.

Where to capture:

  • The BayEngine mobile app is the primary capture surface. Each task has a camera button; the camera shoots photos or records video clips, and can also pull from the device's gallery. Video recording stops itself at three minutes. Captures made offline are kept on the device and upload on their own when the connection returns, surviving an app restart.
  • The web Inspections tab accepts uploads per task: drag files onto the media area or use the picker. It takes images and video files.

Limits: photos are capped at 25 MB each, videos at 250 MB and three minutes. That is generous for phone captures; the caps exist so a screen recording or a dashcam file does not end up in a customer report.

A bad shot is not a problem. Every thumbnail has a delete control: on mobile, tap the delete badge on the thumbnail; on the web, delete asks for confirmation first. Delete, retake, done. Deleted media disappears from the customer report as well. On the web you can also drag thumbnails to reorder them, including across tasks, which sets the order the customer sees.

Media attached to a specific task follows that task to the customer report and to the evidence under Services. Media attached to the inspection as a whole, rather than any task, stays internal; the customer never sees it.

Annotate a photo​

On the mobile app, opening a photo offers an annotation editor: draw rectangles, circles, and arrows, or place text, in a choice of colors, with undo. Drag a shape to the trash target to remove it. The annotated version is what the customer sees, on the inspection report and in service evidence, while the original stays untouched underneath. An arrow pointing at the leak answers the question before the customer asks it.

The web has no annotation editor; annotate on the device that took the photo.

Voice and photo AI on the mobile app​

If your shop has an AI connection configured, the mobile app adds two shortcuts, both gated behind the technician's judgment:

  • Voice. A microphone button records while you talk through the inspection: "front pads four millimeters, attention; battery tests good; odometer eighty-two thousand four fifty." The AI turns that into ratings and findings text on the matching tasks, and an odometer reading is written to the Repair Order's mileage in. You can keep talking while swiping between tasks; each stretch of speech applies to the task that was on screen. If the recording captured nothing intelligible, nothing is applied.
  • Photo analysis. From a task with photos, the app can suggest findings text and a rating from what is in the images. The suggestion is shown to the technician, who applies or discards it; nothing is written without that consent.

Without a shop AI connection the buttons report that AI is not enabled, and everything on this page still works by hand. On the web, dictation exists only on the Estimator instructions field of the add-service dialog, not on inspection findings.

Who sees what​

The short version: findings, task media, and the two customer-facing Service note fields reach the customer; everything else stays in the shop.

Customer-facing, once the inspection is completed and customer-visible:

  • Findings text, per task, with its rating icon.
  • Photos and video attached to tasks, annotated versions preferred.
  • The inspection report itself: "14 items checked by Marcus today at 10:20 am", with Critical / Attention / Good filter chips and items sorted worst first. Good items are listed too; a report that only ever shows problems reads like a sales document. The technician's first name appears only while the shop's staff-names portal setting is on.
  • Under each proposed Service, a Technician findings section repeats the linked findings with their text and photos, next to the customer's own reported reasons. This is the evidence that sells the work.
  • On the Service: Customer notes and Why this is needed.

Staff-only, never on the portal or the report:

  • Internal inspections (templates with customer visibility off, like a quality-control sheet).
  • Inspection-level media not attached to any task.
  • The Service's Internal notes.
  • A Technician Concern typed by hand on the Estimate tab. It shows on the staff service card and drives the Urgent grouping, but its text does not ride to the portal; only inspection-backed findings do. If a hand-typed concern needs a customer-facing story, put it in the Service's Why this is needed.

For Repair Order notes generally, see Add notes and maintain the Repair Order; for the customer's side of the portal, see Use the Customer Portal for approvals, status, documents, and payment.

Permissions​

Ratings, findings text, and media all ride the inspections resource: update on inspections covers rating tasks, writing findings, and uploading or deleting media, and the Technician role's invite-time defaults include it. Technician Concerns follow the document they sit on instead; recording or editing one needs create or update permission on that Estimate or Repair Order. See Assign Shop Roles, shop access, and User Permissions.