{"id":6331,"date":"2019-10-03T14:53:18","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T21:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/power-platform\/blog\/power-apps\/kellyroofing\/"},"modified":"2024-09-30T11:12:03","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T18:12:03","slug":"kellyroofing","status":"publish","type":"power-apps","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/power-platform\/blog\/power-apps\/kellyroofing\/","title":{"rendered":"Kelly Roofing uses PowerApps to capture photos at work sites"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kelly Roofing<\/a> is a family business, that has grown to become the largest roofing contractor in Collier County, Florida and was listed as \u201cRoofing Contractor\u201d magazine\u2019s Top 100 Roofing Contractors in the United States. Their diverse crew representing twenty nationalities and three primary languages completes approximately hundred work orders per week. Kelly Roofing implemented Dynamic 365 for Sales and Field Service along with Business Central, which has served as the backbone of their company, allowing them to scale quickly and efficiently. However, they needed additional solutions to streamline their photographing and filing process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this blog post we\u2019ll look at how Kelly Roofing partnered with PowerObjects<\/a>, an HCL Technologies Company, to build a Microsoft Power Platform solution that seamlessly extends the capabilities of Dynamics 365, with data being stored in the Common Data Service and SharePoint Online. The solution also integrates with Microsoft Teams via Microsoft Flow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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BUSINESS SCENARIO<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Kelly Roofing implemented Dynamics CRM in 2012, followed by Field Service in 2015, and adopted Dynamics 365 Business Central in 2016. Dynamics 365 is used to manage all customer and work order information for roof installation or repair jobs. Each work order is complex with a lot of details, such as the shingles needed, sizes, crew that will work on the job, the vendors used, and more. It also requires dispatch timing, customer communications, driving directions, capturing photos and reporting status updates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Dynamics 365 was successfully used to store and manage the information, Kelly Roofing needed a task-focused mobile solution for crew members to collect photos and perform quick status updates while at a job site, such as the job status, whether the customer should be emailed, and more. Since some job sites are in low connectivity areas, the solution had to support the ability to store the photos and status updates on the device and upload later when the device was back online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BEFORE POWER PLATFORM<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Prior to the Power Platform solution, roofers spent their days on rooftops and their evenings in front of their computers trying to reconcile and organize the day\u2019s photos. This was a major bottleneck and a challenging process to attach jobsite photos to the proper corresponding client records inside Dynamics 365. It was an arduous manual process that involved way too many data transfers and far too much time.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Kelly Roofing evaluated third party solutions specifically designed to catalog job site photos. What they found is that the solutions were expensive, and would create additional data silos which is the very thing they wanted to avoid with Dynamics 365. They wanted a solution that would seamlessly integrate with Dynamics 365, which led them to PowerApps and Microsoft Flow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

POWER PLATFORM SOLUTION \u2013 JOB PHOTO APP<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Kelly Roofing partnered with PowerObjects to build a solution using the Microsoft Power Platform. They described their needs and the painful manual process for managing photos. Within a matter of a few weeks and an estimated 120 hours of development time, Samantha Brown and Aakash Jain from the PowerObjects team had implemented a solution that considerably simplified the process. A PowerApps mobile app was deployed to all 120+ crew members who have been using it daily since the spring of 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Kelly Roofing crew members use PowerApps<\/strong> running on their mobile device to take photos before, during, and after a job. The photos are stored offline on the device and uploaded to SharePoint Online<\/strong> once the device is connected to the network. All photos are automatically named to match a standard naming scheming that includes the status and location of the job. The app is also used to update job information including status and notes directly into the customer records stored in the Common Data Service<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Microsoft Flow<\/strong> is used to process the photos and upload them to SharePoint. It is also used to automatically post job updates to a Microsoft Teams channel along with a link to the photos, and to email photos directly to customers and staff members<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The app started as a way to take photos from the field and put them into the document library attached to the Dynamics 365 job record. But after a few innovative ideas, PowerApps allowed them to do so much more with the solution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scheduling:<\/strong> The app now provides a list of all jobs that each crew has on their schedule for a given timeframe. Crew leaders used to come into the office every morning to get paper copies of their job tickets for the day. That is no longer the case. Now, crew members receive all jobs for the day in the app, including all the client information \u2013 phone number, directions and job details. This has helped Kelly Roofing realize a 25.8% reduction in trip time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reporting:<\/strong> The app provides a Daily Job Site Report for the customers. The report includes five questions that must be answered daily by the onsite team leader \u2013 where are you in the job, was the crew on the job, what is the status, what do you want to tell the customer, and what internal notes need to be collected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to the PowerApp, the crew leader would need to locate a Wi-Fi connection, log into Dynamics 365 on a laptop, and answer these five questions. Now, they use the app to complete the reports right from their phones with simple yes\/no toggles. It is quick and enables real time updates to be provided to the customer on the progress of their project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s been a 36% drop in customer call-backs because the pertinent information is now available to everyone in the company in real time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Access to documentation:<\/strong> Crew members can immediately access any and all documentation from the client record in Dynamics 365. Prior to the app, all documents had to be uploaded manually with no real time updates. Now:<\/p>\n\n\n\n