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Managing the Dictionary in the App

Speed up reporting with the built-in Dictionary system—designed to help you complete detailed reports efficiently while out in the field.

Steve Rad avatar
Written by Steve Rad
Updated this week

The InventoryBase app Dictionary helps speed up report writing by suggesting relevant rooms, items, descriptions, and conditions as you type. It supports text shortcuts, speech-to-text, and learns from your inputs to prioritise commonly used phrases. While the Dictionary can’t be customised in-app, changes made online sync automatically to ensure consistency across your team.

Read our support guide on how to manage the dictionary from within your online dashboard.

Here's just a few reasons why InventoryBase's app is leading the pack in faster property reporting: 

  1. Scroll through a list of items, descriptions or conditions to tap on the relevant choice 

  2. Begin typing sentences to filter suggestions to what you're typing (ie 'white')

  3. Type shortcuts to match longer phrases or whole sentences (ie 'wp' for 'white painted') 

  4. Built sentences from a few strokes (ie 'wh' => 'white ' then 'pai' => 'painted' then 'woo' => 'wooden') 

  5. Combine your own device's dictionary or speech-to-text using your keyboard microphone button 

Your Dictionary will be shared across your Team to improve consistency in reports and training. 

Any changes to your Dictionary will sync with your mobile app when you login. To fetch new changes, tap 'Fetch Online Preferences' from your app's Settings page.

The Dictionary that loads differs according to the selected input:

  • Adding a Room/Area: Loads the common 'Rooms' dictionary

  • Adding an Item: Loads the common list of 'Items' specific to the room and all non-specific Items.  

  • Entering a Description: Loads the 'Descriptions' specific to the item and all non-specific descriptions. 

  • Entering a Condition: Loads the common 'Conditions' dictionary. 

  • Adding an Item to the Meters block: Loads the common Meters dictionary

  • Adding an item to the Keys block: Loads the common list of Keys 

  • Adding an item to the Alarms block: Loads the common list of security/safety alarms

  • Adding an item to the Manual block: Loads the common list of appliance/household manuals

Room-specific Items are Items in your Dictionary that only show within certain rooms, like "Kettle" only showing within "Kitchen". Any matching items will show starred at the top of the dictionary list when adding a new item. 

Item-specific Descriptions are descriptions in your dictionary that only show for specific items, i.e. "White painted wooden door" only showing when the item is named "Door". Any matching descriptions will showed starred at the top of the dictionary list when modifying an item's description. 

We've pre-populated your Dictionary with a bunch of industry standard items, descriptions and conditions. If you wish, your Dictionary can be personalised and customised online via your Dashboard (Settings > Dictionary). 

While you're completing a report on the app, InventoryBase will remember any descriptions or conditions you type for specific items and automatically star them at the top of your Dictionary list when you're modifying a similar item in another room. 

If you want to caption your photos, we'll also pre-populate a Dictionary list of terms based on the item's name, descriptions and conditions to add corresponding text. 

As we mentioned before, the InventoryBase Dictionary works in parallel with your device's built in dictionary, speech-to-text and text shortcuts. You can complete reports even faster with your microphone and/or if you setup Auto-expanding words via your device's Keyboard Shortcuts settings (i.e. LHS => "left hand side"). 

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