Learn about MQA templates

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In this video, we're going to look at the template editor in Monitor QA. You'll find the templates that you have under your library section in your left column menu. If I open that up, you'll see templates.

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For Home Launch, we typically use checklist type of templates rather than audit type of templates. Audits are more of a score, where you can score things based on completion and inspection can receive like an 80% grade or a 90% grade. That really doesn't make a lot of sense in the Home Launch business, so we use checklists.

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So if you click on checklist, you'll see the templates that you have in your system. So I have three here. I have the two standard ones for home visit and service record, and I also have made a copy of my home visit one, which I can then edit.

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To make a copy, let's say I'll do that again here. I'm going to click over here on my three dots, say copy template, and the system will then automatically make a copy for me. You can then edit the copy as much as you want.

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So if you're going to create a new template for properties and it's going to be very similar to a previous template, copy it first and then edit the copy to make your new template. If you want to create a new template from scratch, you can always do that using the blue button at the top here and say create a new checklist. Instead, I'm going to edit the one that I've just created here.

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Now you'll notice that it's a little bit grayed out and it also has the word draft right here. Templates are in draft mode, which means you can edit them. So if I come in here and I click on edit template, this will now bring it up for me.

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You'll see up here on the top it says draft mode or I can publish. Once I've made my edits and I'm ready for it to now become live, I would publish it. So that's how you manage that.

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If you go in and edit an existing template, like let's say my services record, if I go in here and edit, you'll notice the first thing it's going to do is it's already telling me it's published and it will not let me make edits. It'll let me look at it and I can review it all I want, but I can't actually make any changes to it if I try to click in here. However, using the three dots, I can change this to edit as draft.

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It will then put it in draft mode. I can make my changes and then when I'm done, I can publish it. Rather than do that, let me go back to the one I already have in draft mode so I can show you some of the features of the template editor.

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So you'll notice at the top you have three sections. You have the setup section, the build section, and the preview. Setup is very simple.

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This is really just what is the name of the template. So let's say I'm going to call this one condo visit and we're going to make this one more applicable to doing a condominium as opposed to a home visit. I can also set up scoring.

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None of this is really important for HomeWatch. What you might want to look at is do you want to put a signature on the report or not? Typically, this is a yes, but if you decide you don't want to have signature, you can just turn it off with this switch. You can also disable the ability to put not applicable on any questions.

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I don't think you'll use that too often, but if you do, you can disable that. And then down here in this box is a place where you can put a disclaimer that's going to appear on the report. So this is a great place to put any other information, even your contact information if you want.

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It shows up at the bottom of the report. You can fill all that in here. Once we're done with the setup page, we can go to the build page.

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This is where we'll set up the different sections of the report and the different types of questions in the report. So you'll notice that I'm editing a copy of my standard template, and I have my exterior, my interior, additional services, and departure sections. I can go to any of these sections by clicking the little arrow here on the side.

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It will now take me to my exterior, and here you can see all of the questions that pertain to that particular section. Now this is a condo, so I can tell you right now we're not going to worry about landscaping. So I can come in here to landscaping, and I can click my little X here to delete that section, and that will remove that entire section and all the questions that belong in that section.

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I can do the same thing here with the pool and spa. I can just delete that section, and we're done. Now this is the exterior.

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We don't have a lot to do on the exterior of a condo, but let's say we did want to put a question about checking the covered parking area for the condo, just so that we can put in here that we did an inspection. So you'll notice when you mouse over any of these items, as we saw a minute ago, you can hit the X to delete it. You have a plus where you can add another subsection or another item.

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Down at the bottom, we can add a subsection or an item, and when you mouse over it, you'll notice you get these little dots here. These allow you to drag and drop and reorder the questions as you need to. So it's very flexible once you're in here.

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Let's add a question about the covered parking carport. I'm going to click on plus item, which will now add this new item for me. If I click into the item, and if you click into any of the items, now you can see all the options you have on that particular question.

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So what we can do here is say check carport. Now by default, when you're doing a checklist, it's going to give you this checklist type of response. This is the little checkbox or X, but you also have all kinds of other different responses you can put.

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So you see things like past failed, a number, a text answer, drop down temperature, or a slider. So I'll cover a couple of these that do matter for HomeWatch. Most of them don't, but yes, no is a very good one to use.

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It's used typically like, you know, is the water main turned off? Yes, no. And you can also change which one of these should be considered the red or failed response. So for example, if for some reason yes is the bad response, just check the box here and now it will become the one that's red as opposed to the green.

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Same thing here. We can also use a number if you want to put in like the temperature, for example, reading. You can put that here and you can also set it up so that if it's between a certain range, it's a failed and it'll show up in red.

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Not used too common, but it's here if you want it. Text answer would be quite common and this is just going to give you a box where you can type whatever text you need to as a response. Drop down allows you to pick different items and create your own list.

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So here for checking the carport, we can put carport empty and clean and we can hit plus to add another option, carport occupied by owner's car or we can put something like carport occupied by unknown vehicle and I've had that happen. Let's say we want to make that one a failed response. Okay, so that'll show up as a fail when we do this.

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Now when we do the inspection and you get to that question, you'll have a drop down and these will be your choices that you can pick for that particular item. The last one that can come in handy here is the slider item and the slider can be set up with different types of values on it. So let's say you're doing the heating oil.

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Heating oil would be like from a zero to one, but you might want increments of quarter tank. Let's make that a 0.25 and make it happy, confirm. So now when you do your slider, you'll see you can do the oil tank and you can say, okay, it's half full, three quarters full, 25% full.

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That's one option that you have here. You could always just do a drop down and have, you know, on the drop down, the different options could be empty, you know, full, three quarters, less than half, however you want to. But you can set those up any way you want so that it appears on the report the way you want to for your clients.

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The other slide bars down here that are important would be require photo. For example, on my default template, I have a question about is the water main on or off and I have default photo set to yes. So you must always put a photo of the water main valve in the report, otherwise you can't complete it.

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You can disable the NA on a particular question. So they cannot pick NA on it, they have to answer it. You can require a signature for a particular item.

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Probably overkill for a typical home watch, but, you know, you don't need that either. Information allows you just to put in maybe some notes that you can put into guide staff. So for example, you know, check fuel gauge located on side of oil.

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And let's spell gauge properly, of course. So this is a note that's going to appear for your internal, but it's not going to appear on the final report that your customer gets. So that's all we have to do here.

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Let me just put this back to the checklist item. And we can do the same with any interior questions, additional services, departure questions, whatever you need to do. Once that's all said and done, we can say save up here on the top right, and then we'll go back.

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And now remember, it doesn't appear live on our system until we publish it, but we could go into preview, and this will show us exactly what this is going to look like. And, you know, we can't really click on it or do anything, but you get the idea that now I can see exactly what it's going to be. And here's check carport, and you see we've got an information item here that's going to show up, you know, if photos were mandatory, that would show up.

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But you can see here's the one we added. So quite easy to use. Go in, drag things around, do whatever you need to when you're finished.

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Publish, and then we'll publish that. Now if we close and go out to our list, you'll see now we have condo visit. It's no longer in gray.

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No longer says draft. It's now published, and we can use it whenever we schedule a report. That's it for a quick overview of the template editor.

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I think it's fairly intuitive. Give it a shot. Run through it best you can, and after you've used it a little bit, you'll be able to do things quite easily in it.

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If you have any questions, please let us know. Otherwise, have a great day. Thank you.