Datumvia

Your own report template, step by step

Datumvia can fill in your own Word document — your letterhead, your wording, your layout — and drop the checklist you ticked off on site into the middle of it. Here is what that looks like at each stage.

On this page

1. The Word file, with brackets
2. Filling it in on the phone
3. The finished report
Checklists in a report
Bullets and numbered lists
Every bracket you can use
Tips and limits

1. The Word file, with brackets

Start from a report you already send. Anywhere a value changes from job to job, replace it with a name in double curly brackets. That is the whole trick: {{site_address}} instead of the address you typed last time.

A Word document with {{company}}, {{report_no}}, {{site_address}} and other names in double curly brackets where the values will go. — The template in Word. Every bracket becomes a field you fill in on the phone.

Save it as .docx, then in the app open a job → Cover report → Use a template → import a Word template and pick the file. Datumvia reads the brackets and builds the form for you.

Download the sample template (.docx) — the one shown above, ready to edit.

Let an AI put the brackets in Copy these instructions into ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or Gemini, then attach the Word report you already send. You get it back with the brackets in place, and everything else untouched.

See what gets copied

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Remove client names, addresses and signatures before you upload the report — a blank copy is best. If your assistant can read web links, you can give it datumvia.com/ai/report-template.md instead of pasting.

2. Filling it in on the phone

When you add the template, Datumvia asks which discipline it belongs to — Structural, Electrical, or a name of your own — so a long list of templates can be filtered. Skip it if you like; hold the template in the list later to change it.

Each bracket appears as a field, in the order it appears in your document.

The fill screen on a phone: fields for report number, date, client, site address, an outcome chosen from chips, and a findings box, each with a microphone beside it. — The same template on the phone. Fields marked **auto** filled themselves in from your Profile, and the microphone beside each one dictates into it.

Three things save typing:

Your details fill themselves in. A field named after something in your Profile — {{name}}, {{company}}, {{phone}}, {{qualifications}} — is filled from there. Date fields start at today.
Fill from drawing reads the title block of the PDF you are working on and offers the client, site address and job number.
Dictate into any field with the microphone beside it, hands full or gloves on.

Tick Fill blanks with N/A at the top if you want anything left empty to print as N/A rather than as a gap. Preview shows the report with filled values highlighted and anything missing in red — that highlighting is for checking and never reaches the PDF you send.

3. The finished report

Save it and the report becomes the cover of the job: your document, filled in, with the checklist in place. The drawing, the pinned photos and any map pages follow behind it in the one PDF.

The finished inspection report: letterhead, job details, a checklist table with PASS, FAIL and N/A results, comments and photo references, then findings and recommendations. — The same template, filled in. Nothing was typed twice: the details came from Profile and the drawing, the table came from the checklist.

Added a checklist after you made the report? Open Cover report and tap Update with the latest checklists. It rebuilds from the same answers — no retyping.

Checklists in a report

There are two ways to carry a list, and you choose per template by which bracket you use.

They differ in one thing that matters on a phone: whether the pins are live.

A checklist printed inside the report as a table, with pin references written as plain text. — **Inside the report.** “Pin 1 (2 photos)” is written text — it tells the reader where to look, but tapping it does nothing.

The checklist printed on its own page behind the report, with Pin 1 and Pin 2 shown as outlined chips that link to the photo pages. — **Attached behind.** The same items, but Pin 1 and Pin 2 are links: tap one and the PDF jumps to that photo page.

The reason is when each one is made. The report is built on the phone before the pages are put together, so at that moment nothing knows what page a photo will land on — a link would have nowhere to point. The attached pages are drawn into the finished PDF, where the photo pages already exist, so they can link straight to them.

So: put the list inside the report when the certificate has to read as one document on paper, and refer to it when whoever gets the PDF will read it on a screen and chase the photos.

The whole list, in place

{{checklist | Frame}} prints that list where the bracket sits: every item, the result, your comments, and which pin holds the photos.

A checklist printed inside the report as a three-column table: description, status code, comments and actions. — Headings keep their place, and an item with a pin says which photos belong to it.

A checklist on the phone: items marked Pass, Fail and N/A, a note, and a pin chip reading Pin 1, 2 photos. — Where it comes from: the list as you work through it on site. A failed item is outlined in red, and the pin chip is the evidence behind it.

A reference to the list behind

{{checklist_ref | Slab — pre-pour | 5.1}} prints a line pointing at the list instead, and the list prints on its own pages behind the report — where the pin chips are tappable and the photos follow.

A line in the report reading: Refer to attached Checklist 5.1 - Slab — pre-pour (1 item, completed 22/09/2026 by J. Rivers). — The number you write is the number the attached pages carry, so the two always agree.

Run the same list twice — an inspection and then the re-check after rectification — and one bracket covers both: | 5.1 gives 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 in the order you started them.

Bullets and numbered lists

Recommendations and defects are usually a list, so a field written as one prints as one. Start each line with a dash for bullets:

- Replace the rear sliding door lintel with 2/240x45 LVL
- Re-inspect before that opening is lined
- Remaining bracing was correct at the time of inspection

or number them yourself, and the report numbers them properly:

1. Replace the rear sliding door lintel with 2/240x45 LVL
2. Re-inspect before that opening is lined

The numbers you type are not printed twice — they tell the app where the list starts, so a list beginning at 3 still reads 3, 4, 5. A dictated list works the same way: say the dash or the number at the start of each line.

Anything that isn’t a list start to finish is left exactly as you typed it, line breaks and all. One bulleted line followed by a sentence stays plain text, so ordinary paragraphs are never turned into something you didn’t ask for.

The built-in Engineering Inspection Report follows the same rules for its recommendations: one per line and they’re numbered for you, or start every line with a dash for bullets. A line that begins with a measurement, like “1.5 m clearance”, is left alone — only a number followed by a space counts as numbering.

Every bracket you can use

Bracket	What it does
`{{anything}}`	A field you type or dictate. The name becomes the label.
`{{name}}`, `{{company}}`, `{{phone}}`, `{{qualifications}}`	Filled from your Profile.
`{{inspection_date}}`	Any name with “date” in it starts at today.
`{{outcome \| Pass \| Fail \| Further work}}`	A dropdown. “Other…” is always offered as well.
`{{logo}}`	Your logo from Profile.
`{{checklist \| List name}}`	That checklist, printed in full where the bracket sits. Leave the name out for every list on the job.
`{{checklist_ref \| List name \| 5.1}}`	A “refer to attached Checklist 5.1” line. The number is optional.

Why a checklist has no brackets for its answers. A dropdown like {{outcome | Pass | Fail}} sets the choices for that one field. A checklist is the other way round: every item is answered with the same buttons, so they belong to the list, not to each line — set once when the list is written or imported. See asking for different answers.

Tips and limits

Type the brackets in one go. If Word splits a name across a spell-check or formatting change, the app may not see it. Typing it straight through, or pasting it, avoids that.
Names can be anything — letters, numbers and underscores. Use the same name twice and it fills in both places.
The checklist has to be started on the job before you build the report, or that spot comes out empty. The preview says so in red.
Headers and footers are dropped. Converting Word to a PDF this way loses the running header and footer, so put anything that must appear — a document number, a revision — in the body of the document instead.
Images, tables and headings all come through. Logos and diagrams in the template print as they are.

Stuck on a template? Send it to info@datumvia.com and we will put the brackets in for you.