Browse Fulcrum blog posts covering mobile data collection, field operations, inspections, and best practices across industries and real-world workflows.
File attachments in Fulcrum
Great news! Today we’re announcing a new file attachment feature that will save inspectors, data collectors, and administrators a ton of work when they need to manage document-based information. Documents are now just another data type: You can add them to any section of your Fulcrum app.
Four approaches to creating location-aware apps. Published June 17, 2021.
Turning everyday actions into actionable insights with location-based data. Published May 20, 2021.
UPDATE: Since this announcement was originally posted, Fulcrum remains SOC 2 compliant.
h President Biden’s infrastructure bill, also known as the American Jobs Plan (AJP), aims to create millions of jobs and modernize the country’s crumbling infrastructure. The federal government touts this bill as the biggest public investment since the 1960s. It aims to kickstart the economy post-pandemic, akin to the era of interstate highways and the Space Race. Utility and telecom companies show keen interest in the $400 billion allocated for infrastructure in the $2 trillion plan.
Preventing incidents, protecting workers, and preserving your bottom line. Published April 15, 2021.
Fulcrum enables organizations to eliminate many cumbersome, inefficient paper processes from their workflows to increase the productivity, safety, and quality of their field operations. But some mobile users — especially those with particularly complex and dangerous jobs — have still needed to carry paper safety booklets and bulky SOPs for reference on project sites. Until today’s launch of Fulcrum’s attached document feature.
Two great features that aid image processing have recently been added to the Fulcrum no-code application platform: Adding multiple photos from the gallery and renaming photos on download.
Blurring faces in photos might sound simple, but it tackles a complex challenge: balancing data collection with privacy protection. Fulcrum’s AI-powered face blurring automates this process, addressing privacy concerns without slowing teams down.
Leveraging the lessons of 2020 for success in 2021, published Jan. 21, 2021.
Organizations that continually increase efficiency, safety, and customer satisfaction all have this in common: They embrace Field process improvement.
Minimizing human error and maximizing productivity, published Nov. 24, 2020.
Businesses are embracing no-code development for its many benefits: It costs less than traditional software development, it increases their agility and productivity, and it takes strain off of their IT departments by enabling non-developers to create and quickly modify custom apps.
No code app development platforms are exploding in popularity, and with good reason.
New Fulcrum Workflow Capability
The Fulcrum team was super excited to introduce the Workflows capability this week, and we can’t wait to hear about the different ways our customers use it!
How did you come up with the idea for Fulcrum? I get asked this, or a version of this question a lot, and we typically include an abbreviated version of the story when we do corporate capability briefings for new prospective customers. I’ve been asked enough times recently that I realized I should probably put it down in writing, because there are likely people at Spatial Networks that don’t even fully understand the history of Fulcrum’s origins.
I would like to start off by thanking the countless users that have been emailing us their feature requests. While we have always planned on adding a lot of the features that users have requested, there have been a lot of feature requests that we have not thought of. It is really interesting to hear how all of you are using Fulcrum for data collection. With a product that is so moldable to the user, we never could have imagined all of the possible use cases. A recent update brought two features that have been requested by a lot of users; an enhanced export tool and a record status tracking field. We hope that our users are happy with these new enhancements and gladly welcome any feedback regarding their functionality.
Auto-populate your address fields
As you may or may not know, one of the best features of Fulcrum is the drag and drop form builder. Recently, we added support for a new type of field that many users have asked for: address fields with reverse geocoding.
We on the Fulcrum team are very pleased to announce a brand-new Report Builder that dramatically enhances your ability to create and deliver professional, error-free reports to your internal or external constituents.
The foundation of any family is centered around the home. It’s the place we live, eat, sleep, and grow through many of life’s changes. Most of us make our home purchases based on neighborhood safety, convenience, education and economic opportunity.
The days of filling out forms using pen and paper and then transcribing that information into a database for use later have come to an end. If you are still using that workflow, you have probably landed here because you’re looking for a better way.
Every year brings a different journey and uncharted experiences that drive our growth. At the start, our country grappled with a government shutdown, casting clouds over 2019. Despite this, we reached beyond those clouds and found the strength to not only begin but also to persevere. That grit and determination have carried us through a topsy-turvy year and promise to guide us in the future.
The birds have migrated south as the autumn air flows through our trees fashioned in bright color confirming the imminent end of 2019. We annually anticipate these changes and enjoy the bounty of Thanksgiving knowing the finish line marks the beginning of a new race. For most, it’s known as the most joyous time of the year, but for others, it’s quite difficult. Particularly those who live in areas with severe weather.
How to create Fulcrum apps
Creating custom mobile forms in Fulcrum is super easy with our drag-and-drop app builder.
Fulcrum’s record editor
Fulcrum’s web-based Record Editor is used by project managers and admins to view, modify, analyze, and export data collected in the field or imported into the platform. The Editor presents your data in an interactive table with an integrated map view and includes tools for browsing and filtering out subsets of records.
We received some exciting news here at Spatial Networks headquarters recently: Fulcrum is now FirstNet Listed and available via the FirstNet App Catalog!
There’s a lot more to construction work than just — well, constructing. Contractors and project managers are also responsible for meeting deadlines, construction standards, and safety regulations.
We’re excited to be headed out to the SaaStr Annual conference in San Jose, CA next week! This year there’ll be over 300 speakers and 12,000 attendees, all there to share ideas, collaborate, and hear success stories from some of the biggest players in B2B software.
As we look back at 2018 in review and all that the Spatial Networks team has accomplished, I’d like to share a number with you: 130,021,386.
Our semi-annual Fulcrum All Hands events are always energizing and fun-filled, but last week was one for the record books. With 54 full-time employees, it was our biggest ever (there were 33 at our last Fall All Hands!) – and if you saw the barrage of photos on our social media accounts, you already know it was epic.
As more security breaches and data thefts by hackers come to light, consumers are demanding increased transparency and responsiveness from companies that process or store their data. In response, the European Parliament approved the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to protect EU citizens and residents from privacy and data breaches.
We recently wrapped up our spring “All Hands” week, the semi-annual event when the entire staff descends on SNI headquarters in St. Petersburg, FL, for presentations, planning, and team-building. (And So. Much. Eating.)
You have probably noticed that many companies have switched from paper to mobile forms, whether it was while checking in at the doctor’s office on a tablet or signing for a package with a stylus.
We’re out at the SaaStr Annual again this year, a yearly gathering of companies all focused on the same challenges of how to build and grow SaaS businesses. SaaS really came into its own as a style of software in the early to mid-2000s with the rise and expansion of the internet as a new vector for delivering software to users. Salesforce was probably the earliest and best-known example of a new model of hosting software on behalf of customers (now known as “the cloud,” then it was an “ASP”). While it’s no longer considered new to deliver software as a hosted service, the benefits of Software as a Service, such as cost savings, scalability, and ease of use, are still surprisingly poorly understood by many buyers of software.
Since we introduced Fulcrum in 2011, the team at Spatial Networks has worked continuously to improve the platform and scaling Fulcrum to become the industry leader in field data collection, as well as to mature as both geographers and software developers. We like to think we’re succeeding on both counts.
Earlier this month, we held our first-ever user conference, Fulcrum Live 2017. At this event, we hoped users could come together to share their experiences and learn from new ways organizations are using Fulcrum to streamline business processes. Judging by the feedback we received, it was a resounding success! It took our team many months to plan and coordinate the event, so we are grateful to those that came. We had nearly 100 attendees descend upon the city of Boston for a day of talking, storytelling, networking, and enjoying great food. We especially want to thank our speakers for taking the time to share their stories with the audience.
Most people understand that the ability to use a piece of software doesn’t equate to the ability to build that piece of software. Using a computer has been an essential skill in the modern workforce for some time, but the ability to make a computer useful by programming it to do what you want is an entirely different skillset. Computer programming is a language and like any language is best learned when you are young. So why aren’t we doing a better job of combining kids and coding – the primary language of the tools that we work with?
Fulcrum Live is an all day event co-located with the International Conference for Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G). Join Team Fulcrum, our partners, and user community on Tuesday, August 15th in Boston, MA for a full day of presentations, case studies, technical talks, and networking! Located at the Boston Seaport and World Trade Center, this fast-paced single day event runs the day before the FOSS4G sessions and is free for conference attendees!
In the software business, a lot of attention gets paid to “shipping” as a badge of honor if you want to be considered an innovator. Like any guiding philosophy, it’s best used as a general rule than as the primary yardstick by which you measure every individual decision. Agile, scrum, TDD, BDD — they’re all excellent practices to keep teams focused on results. After all, the longer you’re polishing your work and not putting it in the hands of users, the less you know about how they’ll be using it once you ship it!
As we just wrapped up a great 2016, it’s important for us to plant some flags for 2017. We’re constantly evolving and improving our platform, so clear milestones ahead of us can be both immensely helpful to guide our team toward shared goals, and also give customers a 2017 Fulcrum roadmap about where we’re headed strategically.
This year was a great one for Fulcrum. Since 2011, it’s been our mission to make communications and data capture more seamless between the office and the field, and the growth in diversity of our customer base has proven that it’s a challenge worthy of solving — that organizations in many verticals are faced with poor back-and-forth process with field operations.
This is part 3 in our series about feedback loops, improving data quality, and reducing the time between response and action. In this part, we’ll identify ways to directly improve feedback loops and highlight various tools which can help you communicate information into actions that will help you achieve your goals.
Being productive requires having the right thought process, as your mental state plays a crucial role. In fact, it is even more important than the tools you use to accomplish tasks. However, many productivity resources focus heavily on the toolbox itself, rather than on how to apply these tools effectively. This week we’ve got a few links on ways to think differently about workflow productivity. Enjoy!
In the days of pen and paper, organizations collected, transcribed, and stored data in physical file cabinets. These cabinets retained information for a minimum of five years to comply with potential audit requirements. With advancements in digital data capture, organizations use forms software, spreadsheets, or sensors to gather information. However, many have not updated their processes significantly, limiting progress in effective data management. Now, the physical file cabinet has been replaced by outdated spreadsheets or an aging Access database. Organizations often accumulate large amounts of legacy data, justifying costs based on operational requirements. Due to the complexity of data management, organizations frequently re-collect the same data unnecessarily. This redundant collection results in added expenses without delivering any real benefits to the organization. Once entered into corporate systems and used initially, much of this data becomes forgotten and unused.
I recently came across an essay entitled The Servitude Bubble, by Umair Haque, regarding technology and the booming “Sharing Economy.” The author makes an interesting argument, emphasizing that the tech industry focuses excessively on trivial app development. Moreover, these apps primarily create systems that rely on armies of servants to perform menial tasks. Haque refers to this trend as the “Servitude Bubble,” highlighting its growth in on-demand labor services for the privileged. Additionally, he argues that this phenomenon represents a significant waste of human potential at its worst.
We’ve worked very hard to design Fulcrum so that it’s as easy as possible for our customers to use. In doing so, we’ve managed to “hide” a lot of the complexities around form & database design that many other platforms expose their users to. By dragging and dropping fields in our form builder, users are essentially creating a complex database without even being aware of it. Here are five important digital form building tips, in no particular order, that can assist new users when building their first form.
Engineering is the art of building things within constraints. Without constraints, you aren’t really doing engineering. Constraints can involve cost, time, attention, tools, or materials. Avoiding “feature creep” is crucial — it adds unnecessary complexity. Here’s an excerpt describing the challenge facing the engineer. The engineer’s task is to identify, understand, and interpret design constraints. It is usually not enough to build a technically successful product; it must also meet further requirements.
