AI Report Builder

The AI Report Builder designs the PDF report for a survey template. The AI reads your survey (and, optionally, example reports you upload) and generates up to three professionally designed report options. You pick the one you like, refine it with the assistant, and publish it — from then on, every completed survey of that template can be turned into a branded PDF report with one click.

Use Cases

Client-facing reports — turn field survey data into a polished, branded PDF the moment a survey is completed
Match an existing look — upload an example of a report your customers already expect, and the generated designs lean toward it
Design before data — the report is designed against the survey template, so a project can ship the survey and its report together before any survey has been completed

Key Concepts

Concept	Description
Style	A professionally designed report look (Editorial, Technical / Tabular, Compliance Certificate, Photo-Forward). You choose one; you don't design page layouts yourself
Report design	Your report for one survey template: a style, plus your choices (colours, fonts, photos, header/footer, summary placement)
Draft / Published	Every generated design is kept as a draft. Publishing makes it the live design that surveyors' reports use — nothing goes live until you publish
Executive summary	An AI-written summary page, generated from each completed survey's actual data. You can review and edit it before sharing the report

The report body always shows the whole survey — every group and field, automatically, in the style you pick — including any photos captured during the survey, shown next to the field or section they were taken against, and any drawings the surveyor pinned observations on. You're choosing how the report looks, not which content appears.

The report styles

Every report is built on one of four professionally designed styles. Styles are fixed, product-designed looks — you pick and personalise one; you don't build page layouts yourself. Each adapts to any survey.

Style	Best for
Editorial	The safe default for most surveys — property and condition inspections, or any report where a polished, magazine-like look matters. Specimen cover, numbered sections, key-findings stat cards.
Technical / Tabular	Checklists, equipment servicing, and multi-item inspections — a compact job-sheet with dense tables and status stamps, where the data is the point.
Compliance Certificate	Regulatory and compliance records — a formal certificate with a compliance banner and a signed declaration block.
Photo-Forward	Reports where photos carry the story — environmental and site surveys, before/after documentation — with a full-bleed hero cover and large captioned figure plates.

Administrators can see the full catalog — each style with a "when to use" note and a sample report — at Services → Survey Templates → Report styles.

New styles are added by the product team as designed, validated additions to the library (they can't be created or edited in the app). If you need a look the four styles don't cover — for example to match a specific customer's house style — ask your account contact.

Designing a report

Open the survey template (Services → Survey Templates) and click Design report.
On the setup screen:
- Browse the style gallery. The AI picks the best styles for your survey — tap one to make sure it's included.
- Optionally add example reports (PDF) or extra logos (accreditations, certifications). The design options will lean toward that look. Files are virus-scanned first; a file that isn't ready yet is picked up next time you generate.
Click Generate design options. The AI reads your survey and designs up to three options, each shown as a full PDF preview with realistic sample data and your branding.
Compare the options side by side and click Use this design on your favourite — or Regenerate options for a fresh set, or Skip — design one for me to jump straight in with a single design.

Your chosen design opens in the workspace as a saved draft. If you come back later, you land straight in the workspace; Explore new designs takes you back to the gallery for a fresh set (your current design stays untouched until you publish a new one).

Refining the design

The workspace shows a live PDF preview that re-renders as you make changes.

Ask the assistant (left panel) in plain English — "use our navy as the accent", "make the photos bigger", "feel more formal", "move the summary to the front". Each proposal appears as a card you Apply or Discard, so nothing changes without your say-so.
Advanced (above the preview) opens the direct controls:
- Document identity — the document type and title lines, and, on a style that offers it, the switch for a cover with both parties. See A cover with both parties.
- Style — switch to a different style; your survey re-flows into it.
- Theme — accent colour and body font for this report, and the accreditation marks it prints. See Accreditation marks.
- Captured photos — whether the photos surveyors take during the survey appear in the report (on by default). When on, they render next to the field or section they were taken against, with a photographs gallery at the end.
- Every photo in the report is numbered Figure 1, Figure 2 and so on, in the order it appears. If a photo carries a label, the label prints beside its number. See Labelling a photo.
- Drawings and pins — whether pinned drawings appear as figures (on by default). See Drawings and pins in the report.
- Photos — how each cover / evidence photo area renders (grid, inline, large, full-page).
- Executive summary — whether it appears, and before or after the survey content.
- Header & footer — what appears at the top and bottom of every page: the style's default, the survey title, the completion date, your standing footer line, or custom text.
Preview data — preview with sample data, or with a real completed survey if one exists.
Demo mode — temporarily overlay a prospect's logo on the preview (never saved) — useful in sales conversations.

When you're happy, click Publish. Reports generated for this template's surveys now use this design. Save draft keeps work-in-progress without going live; Obsolete retires a published design.

Labelling a photo

A label says what a photo shows. It's what a reader has to go on, so a report full of unlabelled photos tells them very little.

Labels are optional. Add one when it helps and skip it when it doesn't — a surveyor working hands-free by voice is never held up by it.

To label a photo:

Open the survey session and click any photo to open it full size. This works everywhere photos appear: on a field, on a section, on an observation, and in Session Photos.
Type into Label (optional) under the photo, then click Save or press Enter.
Clear the box and save to remove a label.

You label a photo after it's uploaded, never before — so a surveyor is never held up mid-capture, and a label can never land on the wrong photo.

On the phone, a surveyor can label a photo in the field, standing in front of the thing it shows:

Tap the photo to open it full size — from a field, a section, a repeated item, or Session Photos.
Tap the label strip under the photo (it reads Add a label when there isn't one yet).
Type the label and tap Save. Leave it empty and save to remove one.

This works with no signal. A label typed offline is kept on the phone and reaches the server on the next sync — whether the photo had already uploaded or is still waiting to.

Labels appear straight away in the report — no change to the report design, and no need to republish it. The report prints the label after the photo's figure number, like Figure 4 — Cracked lintel above the door.

Note: figure numbers follow the order photos appear in the document, and are worked out each time a report is generated. If you add a photo and regenerate, later numbers can shift. Quote the label rather than the number in an email.

Drawings and pins in the report

If surveyors attach drawings and pin observations on them, each pinned drawing appears as a figure after the section it belongs to:

The drawing, with a numbered marker for every observation of that group pinned on it.
A legend underneath: marker number, observation, and — where the observation has a survey finding — its classification and severity, taken from the most severe finding.
The observation's own pin row reads "Marker 3 · plan.pdf p.1".

A group pinned on two drawings produces two figures. Marker numbers follow the observation's position in its group, so "Defect 3" is marker 3 wherever it appears.

Show sheet figures (Advanced → Drawings and pins) switches them off for this design. The observation still says which marker and drawing it has; only the pictures go.

A drawing that can't be rendered — still being prepared, preparation failed, or blocked by the virus scan — keeps its pins in the data but is left out. Very large reports also drop images that don't fit the page budget; drawings are allocated their share first, and the words always stay.

Nothing here needs configuring in the survey template beyond adding a Location pin field. See Drawings & Pins →

A cover with both parties

Most covers name one party: you. The parties cover puts your client and your own organisation side by side on the front page, each with a logo, an address and a named contact, over an accreditation strip and a foot carrying the revision, the date the report was written and the job number. It's the shape of a formal report of findings.

Only the Editorial style offers it today. On a style that doesn't, the switch isn't shown, and a design keeps its setting if you switch styles and come back.

To turn it on: in Advanced → Document identity, switch on Client and contractor side by side on the cover. The preview re-renders straight away.

The body pages don't change. Only the cover does, and it replaces the cover photo with the two columns.

What fills it

Your own side comes from Organisation branding and the survey's assignee, so it's filled in already. The client's side comes from the customer and the job:

On the cover	Where you set it
Client logo	Logo on the customer record (SVG or PNG)
Client address	Billing address on the customer record, picked from that business's addresses
Client contact, phone, email	Client contact on the job — the person at the customer named on this report. The list follows the job's Customer field
Revision	Revision on the job, free text such as "Rev A"
Project job no.	Job Reference on the job
Date report written	The survey's completion date

Anything you leave blank is simply left out — the columns keep their place and nothing shifts. A client with no logo shows as a name, a job with no contact drops the contact rows, and a job with no reference or revision drops the job line and those foot cells. So the cover is worth switching on even before every customer record is filled in.

Accreditation marks

Accreditation marks are the small logos of the bodies that approve, certify or verify your work — an ISO badge, a Gas Safe mark, a trade association. They print under "Approved, certified or verified by" on the parties cover, and beside your logo on the other covers.

You upload them once and every report design uses them, the same way your logo and accent colour work.

To add them: open Advanced → Organisation branding, then Accreditation marks → Add a mark. SVG or PNG, up to six, and they appear in the order you add them. The cross on a mark removes it. Editing these requires the Admin Settings permission; everyone else sees them but can't change them.

A mark has to be a file you upload. A link to an image hosted somewhere else won't print, because reports are built without reaching out to the internet. If the assistant offers to set one from a web address, upload the image instead.

Giving one report different marks

A single report design can carry its own set — a certificate that only applies to one kind of work, say.

In Advanced → Theme, the marks are labelled either · organisation or · this report, which tells you which set that design is using:

Use different marks for this report — upload one, and the design switches to its own set. From then on it ignores the organisation's.
Use the organisation's marks — throws that set away and goes back to inheriting, so later changes in Organisation branding reach this report again.

Removing a report's last mark has the same effect as the second button: it goes back to the organisation's marks. To print a report with no marks at all, remove them in Organisation branding.

Organisation branding

Click Organisation branding (in Advanced) to set details that apply to every report: accent colour, business contact and address, company registration and VAT numbers (shown in the "Issued by" block), your accreditation marks (see Accreditation marks), and a standing footer line (e.g. a confidentiality notice) that new designs place at the bottom of every page automatically. Editing these requires the Admin Settings permission. Your logo is still set in Account → Setup.

Generating a report from a completed survey

Once a design is published, every completed survey session of that template shows an AI Report section on its detail page:

Click Generate report. The executive summary is written from the survey's data (first time only), the pages are designed — including any photos captured during the survey — and the PDF opens.
Use Copy link to share it — the link expires (the expiry time is shown); regenerate for a fresh one.
Click Review summary to read and edit the executive summary, then Regenerate report to see your edits in the PDF. An edited summary is never overwritten.

The last report is remembered: when you come back to the session, the section shows Open report (which fetches the stored PDF — the link is always fresh) and Regenerate report to rebuild it with the latest survey data.

If the survey changes

Report designs reference survey fields (for example, which field is the cover title). If you later remove such a field from the survey:

The survey editor warns you before the change, naming where the field appears in your report design.
The Report Builder shows a notice ("This report design uses survey fields that were removed") with a Fix automatically button that points the affected parts at the closest current fields.
The report body is never affected — it always adapts to the survey's current structure.

Tips

Upload an example first. A strongly branded example report is the fastest way to designs that match customer expectations — it steers colours, tone, and style choice.
Set organisation branding once. Registration details and the standing footer line then appear on every new design without per-report work.
Publish deliberately. Drafts are safe to experiment with — surveyors only ever see the published design.
Preview with a real survey. Sheet figures and photos only show their true weight against a completed session, not sample data.
Regenerate after a branding change. A report you generated earlier is stored as it was. New marks, or a new cover, reach it only when you click Regenerate report.