Pocket PC Case Study - Building Inspection Reports

For our authoring solution for Building Inspection Reports (see the Case Study under XML Authoring Solutions), SMH Systems performed a data modelling exercise and developed designs and schema for an XML document type that could store all necessary data. These XML documents replaced previous Microsoft Word reports that extended to 30 pages or more. XSLT stylsheets were developed to provide an identical appearance to the previous Word versions when viewed on a desktop PC . The XML report files could be copied unchanged to Pocket PC, and viewed using a suite of stylesheets that enabled them to be navigated and viewed in convenient sections on the handheld device's quarter-VGA screen.

The Inspection Report documents were substantial and had a complex internal element structure: the XML files were typically 40K-60K and the XSD schema definition ran to over 800 lines. But the handheld device was always able to process them quickly and reliably. This screenshot shows one report section as visualised on the PPC. A simple hierarchical navigation tree provided fast access to each section of the report. Reports could include photos - which might even be captured using the Pocket PC's built-in camera. The Windows and hardcopy versions of the report included the photo inline; on the PPC's smaller display only a thumbnail placeholder was shown, as illustrated. The photo could be zoomed to the full screen size of the handheld device, simply by tapping on the thumbnail. The same JPG files, which stored the photo at its full camera resolution, were used interchangeably between PPC and desktop environments, just like the XML document that they accompanied.

Editing forms were developed for composition and update of the report sections on the Pocket PC. Tapping the Edit/View control at upper right switched between the Reader View of a report section as illustrated above, and an Editing View.

This view, illustrated at right, provided selection controls so that any topic in a report section could be selected for editing - the same principle as used for our Windows-based authoring tools, but adapted for the small screen size of the handheld device.

Tapping the selection controls at left expanded each subsection to expose its component elements. Tapping the right-side controls selected individual elements and presented them in a form view for editing.

An example editing form is shown at right. The controls in the upper part of the form enable the selected element to be worked on The lower part provides controls for adding and deleting elements, and for moving and reorganising them. These tools are Pocket PC equivalents of the 'IDCM' functions provided in our XML authoring tools for Windows. The process of data capture was power-assisted by presenting situation-dependent picklists for drilldown to standard words, phrases or even whole paragraphs of boilerplate. The picklists embodied both the practices for conducting inspections and reporting on findings, and the knowledge of its expert staff. Notes taken in the field using the structured capture of observations could later be edited into narrative or report form, using a desktop author that we developed as part of the solution. The same picklists, which of course were coded up as XML, could be employed by both handheld and desktop authors.

The Pocket PC application also included a number of administrative tools, for such functions as controlling upload/download, and for managing an inventory of photographs. It also supported 'expert' and 'novice' modes of operation.

Unlike most PDA data entry applications the SMH Systems solution did not generate a lightweight output file such as CSV. Our solution could accept, process and return the complete XML document with all its richness of detail. This greatly simplified and speeded the interfacing between processing steps, while other major benefits included the potential to return the document to the Pocket PC at a later date, and re-use it as the starting point for subsequent inspections.

One very important conclusion drawn from this project is that it's critical to develop proof-of-concept mockups of the user interface at an early stage, and use these to verify that appearance and data capture performance on the PDA is satisfactory for the intended users under the expected field working conditions.

More on XML Document Portability between Pocket PC and Windows.

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