The dog days of August didn’t slow SolarGrade down. This month had three huge new features — the ability to create an issue from the map view, enhancing the SolarGrade camera, and color coding all issues depending on action taken for easier remediation. And that’s not all! We still pushed out smaller features and user requests. Thank you again for all your support and brilliant ideas and feedback to make SolarGrade better. 

But first, if you’re attending RE+, we want to see you there! Please visit the SolarGrade Booth #17029 (Sands, Level 2) to meet our team in person. Schedule a meeting here or drop by when you’re free. We hope to see you there — and be sure come early for your pick of exclusive SolarGrade stickers and t-shirts. 

For those of you who aren’t familiar with our app: SolarGrade is a cloud-based fieldwork management platform for renewable energy assets. Sign up for a free 30-day trial to learn more!

Creating an Issue from the Map View 

Traditionally, SolarGrade checklists have appeared in a notebook view, allowing you to swipe between sections, categories, and items. With this new feature, you can create an issue from the map view of the project site. This will allow you to stroll through a site, marking issues as you see them, without having to navigate between all the sections and categories.

Please check out our instructional YouTube video for brief instructions on how to use this new feature! 

Native Camera Plug-in 

The SolarGrade app now plugs in to all those awesome camera lenses on your smartphone, so you can take photos the same way you take them in the camera app. This means higher quality images, a faster camera, multi-lens functionality, mirroring, and a whole lot more. It’s time to elevate your on-site photos to full-blown glam shots. 

Change Issue Icon and Color Depending on Action Taken 

This is a big win for anyone doing remediation or return site visits. Instead of having a red triangle icon for any issue marked as Found on-site, we’ve color coded them based on your selected action taken. This way, you can see the status of an issue at a quick glance, without diving into the issue itself. Here is your new rubric: 

• Issue items that have not been examined — blue triangle 
• Issue items that are marked as “Not Found” — 2 horizontal lines and 2 checkmarks 
• Issue items that are marked as “Found & Task Created” — red triangle 
• Issue items that are marked as “Found & Corrected” — 1 green checkmark 
• Issue items that are marked as “Found & Noted” — a yellow, horizontal paper 
• Issue items that are marked as “Found” and “Verified” — 1 green circle with a white checkmark inside (think of Twitter verified symbol, but green) 

To provide a visual, here is an example of all of the above options in order. 

New Logic for Including Project Information in Reports 

Any field left blank from the Project Information section of your SolarGrade project will be omitted from the report. For example, if you do not have energy storage on site, and you leave the energy storage field blank, it will not appear in your report. This removes unnecessary clutter from the report and keeps only the information relevant to your site. 

Hyperlink Table of Contents in PDF 

We’re introducing some of that sweet, sweet interactive report functionality to our PDF reports. SolarGrade PDF reports now have a hyperlinked table of contents that lets your team jump around the PDF with ease. 

Continue Issue Numbering Down to Item Level 

We’ve continued the item numbering down to the item level (instead of only section and category). This will make issues easier to find in reports, inspections, and when you bulk download all the images in a report. 

Drop us a line if you have any questions!

SolarGrade Team