SUPPORT CENTER
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
This is the company account that owns the affiliated projects, work orders, templates, and site visits.
Categories are the subheadings that appear within each section in a report. Most often, they are a specific piece of equipment or location within a PV system.
These are the people associated with a project who are not SolarGrade users nor clients. They most often represent the project’s O&M Provider, EPC, Asset Owner, Asset Manager, Offtaker, Developer, Contractor, or other 3rd party stakeholder.
A high-level overview of project status, information, and upcoming work in each company account.
An informational Item is used to tag information that is not an addressable issue but needs documentation. It can be about a specific component, piece of equipment, or area of a site. The different types are outlined below.
- Binary checkboxes
- Multiple checkboxes
- Date
- Range
- Number
- Text
- Photo
- Table
- Geolocation
- Signature
- Progress bar
- Timestamp
- Document
An issue is a non-conformity against some type of criteria. In other words, an issue represents any type of condition or observation in the field that does not meet the standards you have established for the project and/or work conducted. They appear in Templates, Tasks, and Issue tables.
Issue status refers to the current state of a standing issue. There are three options for issue status.
- Open – an issue that has not yet been resolved
- Closed – an issue that has been resolved
- Observation – a non–conformity not yet classified as an open issue but noted internally.
Items are the smallest unit in a report. There are both issues and informational items. Informational items are meant to gather information about a specific component, piece of equipment, or area of a site. Issue items are the non-conformities teams are checking for against some criteria.
Occurrence refers to the number of times an Issue occurs. This field is automatically populated with the number of locations tagged for an issue.
A work order and project operations management system designed to provide easy to use and at-a-glance visibility of all your on-site activity and progress. You can use this tool to plan future fieldwork, set technician’s schedules, and manage budgets.
A portfolio is a group of projects arranged by users based on specific criteria – client, region, etc.
Prevalence is similar to the occurrence field; however, instead of noting the specific instances or number of times an issue was reported, they illustrated the overall impact of those issues on site. We've broken down our definitions of each option below.
Isolated
Definition — Occurring as a single or rare instance.
Timeframe — Singular event or limited duration
Scope — Qualitative (unique or uncommon instances)
Geographic Link — Localized to a specific site or context
Prevalent
Definition — Widespread at a given time
Timeframe — Snapshot at a specific moment
Scope — Quantitative (how many cases exist)
Geographic Link — Not location specific
Endemic
Definition — Constantly present in a specific area
Timeframe — Ongoing over time
Scope — Qualitative (regular occurrence)
Geographic Link — Tied to a specific area or group
Systemic
Definition — Pervasive throughout a system
Timeframe — Sustained or recurring over time
Scope — Quantitative and qualitative (extensive and influential)
Geographic Link — Applies to entire systems, regions, or areas
Progress Tracking is a feature that is designed to track the overall progress of an installation or construction on-site and calculate the overall percentage of completion. However, like most SolarGrade materials, it is customizable, and you can use it to track anything.
Progress tracker refers to the item or metric that is tracked in the progress tracking feature.
A Task or Site Visit that collects open issues for remediation and closure. There are two types of punchlists.
- Remediation-only punchlist
- Narrows the Site Visit scope to only the open issues from an existing Site Visit to perform remedial work.
- Custom punchlist
- Users can filter the Issues Table to create a specific remediation checklist that pulls issues from multiple site visits
- Users can pull issues from the Issues Table and merge with a site visit template to create a full, template-based inspection that carries previous issues of that site.
Severity refers to the level of safety risk associated with an issue. There are four options:
- Negligible Issue – does not present a risk to personnel or site safety. Consider creating a task to remedy on the next site visit.
- Minor Issue – does not present an immediate risk to personnel or site safety. Create a task to remedy on the next site visit.
- Major Issue – presents a risk to personnel or site safety. Dispatch technician to remedy the issue as soon as possible.
- Critical Issue – presents an immediate risk to personnel or site safety. De-energize the system, notify appropriate personnel, and pursue corrective actions immediately.
Site Visits to refer to all fieldwork instances or “truck rolls.” The Site Visit feature is a virtual checklist where teams can work through a streamlined workflow that standardizes the fieldwork into reports. These checklists are built using templates and can be customized according to each site.
A Site Visit is also a type of Task. Punchlists are a type of Site Visit.
Tasks are the line items within each work order. There are three types of tasks.
- Site visits
- These are the standard site visits that you can create in SolarGrade under each project and using a template within your account. With the Planner feature, you can link existing site visits to Work Orders or create new ones through the feature.
- Punchlists
- Punchlists are a type of site visit where remedial work is performed. If the existing work is in SolarGrade, you can choose from open issues in that project and build your own task.
- Custom
- This is a text field where you can input items that need to be completed that are not related to a site visit. For example, you could create a task titled “Book travel and accommodations” and assign it to your teammate heading to site.
The purpose of the work performed. At the Work Order level, this is the overall purpose of the whole Work Order. At the Task or Site Visit level, it details the work performed on-site.
Templates, sometimes referred to as checklists, workflows, or frameworks, outline the specific protocol that should be followed on-site. They are organized into a ‘mind-map’ of sections, categories, and items. These items are then split into informational items and issue items.
The SolarGrade user who is performing the work and navigating the software. This is a billable user.
A work order is a group of tasks to be performed and completed for a client as part of a contract or specific scope of work.