Home Inspector Pro

This is a big one! The updates in HIP 6.0 are larger than all the updates in HIP 5.x combined.

Every change, new feature or bug fix here comes directly from user input. When you have ideas or issues please let us know. [email protected]

New Features

• HIP-61 List feature is enabled within captions. There's also a new button to the right of the caption to popup a larger text area if needed
• HIP-142 Added a new variable $InspectorSignature that can be used in documents to automatically insert the insectors signature.
• HIP-142 Added a new checkbox on the Cover Page Designer to place the Inspector Signature on the cover page
• HIP-260 Text within the summary (page number, item and narrative) is now clickable and takes client directly to the actual narrative on the report.
• HIP-272 Multiple Summaries feature added! Report Settings => Advanced Colors & Summaries. You can assign different colors to separate summaries and add a title to each summary. This could be by severity, by profession or however you want to split things up. You could also use the same color for multiple sections if you want.
• HIP-379 Control of the footer fonts on each page (page number, company, etc) can now be controlled per section via Report Settings => Section Colors & Print Order.
• HIP-323 Glossary section now has its own Fonts options under Report Settings => Section Colors & Print Order.
• HIP-381 Section Title font added under Report Settings => Formatting to set a default font style for new sections created. Also used when "Inherit from Formatting" is clicked on Section Colors & Print Order to reset all sections.
• HIP-383 No more license files! Licensing is now controlled from https://office.homeinspectorpro.com . You can purchase new licenses/subscriptions, create employee accounts and assign them directly here. Licenses can be disabled at any time for your employees as well.
• HIP-394 Agent photo is imported from ISN when importing inspection and stored in new field in the address book.
• HIP-487 Added the ability to specify if individual lists are single select or multi select by default on a case by case basis. Right-clicking on a list will still popup the opposite. Note this doesn't affect mobile which always gives the option for multi-select. Change via the list editor.
• HIP-489 Added an option to set a separate delimiter for each list (comma, space or nothing) to setup separate use cases for different uses.
• HIP-490 Lots of keyboard shortcuts added in the List editor for settings up/editing new lists. Click the Keyboard Shortcuts button under Report Settings => Edit Lists to view more details
• HIP-499 Support for HEIC (new iOS format) images added
• HIP-500 Import form-fillable PDFs via Manage Documents and map them to items and narratives within the report. This allows form fillable documents to be populated directly from within the report whether done via HIP Mobile or HIP Desktop.
• HIP-545 Added a Dictionary Maintenance feature under the Edit menu to view all custom changes made to the dictionary.
• HIP-547 Click to enlarge the photo added into the HTML and PDF version of the report! The popups will enlarge up to 100% of their resolution. Increase the quality of photos in HIP and HIP mobile and the popups will be larger (as will your file size!)
• HIP-570 New variables added for those outside the US for documents, contract, and cover page designer. $ClientInspectionProvince and $AgentProvince added to get the province instead of the state. Province/Suburb variables are also added to the Client and Inspection CityFull variables as well.
• HIP-578 Option added to put the caption field on top of the photo on the photos page (or below, the default) under Application Settings. Also added a dropdown arrow on the left side of the caption so you can click on either side of the caption dropdown for increased speed (and less mouse movement).
• HIP-625 Added new summary view formats. New formats include stacking the page and item numbers and item names to allow more space for the narratives. 
• HIP-637 Request Repair List feature added into the HIP Office upload! This is fully functional right now but we are also added more features onto the HIP Office side as well as improving the design and ease of use.
• HIP-638 Link PDF documents directly to narratives. Works similar to linked graphics. When you select a narrative a PDF document will automatically be added at the end of that section of the report with a link from the narrative that jumps to the PDF. This works in the HTML version of the report as well. This is great for automatically including documents with more information on items such as asbestos, Chinese drywall, etc.
• HIP-645 Progress bars added through the program when generating the report, saving, uploading, etc to give better feedback to users.
• HIP-660 New option added to use Advanced Colors within Captions as well. The new setting is with the other Advanced Color options.
• HIP-651 Support for 360 degree images added within the PDF and HTML version of reports. In the PDF version a left/right arrow has been added when you click the image to pan. On the HTML version, you can grab the image with your mouse and pan in all directions. Note that for the PDF this requires a full PDF reader like Adobe Reader.
• HIP-666 Should this number even be allowed?! Added a new Save icon next to each photo on the desktop to make it quick and easy to save a copy of an image within the report to use elsewhere.
• HIP-679 Allow text within narratives to be colored and/or stylized separately from the overall narrative color!
• HIP-680 Text can now be hyperlinked to a website instead of having to write out the entire website address in the narrative.
• HIP-683 Table of Contents option added within the report. Items are interactive and can be clicked to jump directly to the page on the summary.
• HIP-691 All new program themes and fonts and sizes added under Edit => Program Theme & Font. Check them out!
• HIP 718 New photo quality options have been added up to 5 to match what's on HIP Mobile now. File size has been greatly reduced but the larger resolutions of quality 4 and 5 will mean larger file sizes. The new options were added so that the image popups added could appear larger in the PDF and HTML report.

Design Changes

• HIP-81 Section headers will not appear at the end of the page if no content within the section will fit on the same page. This means there will be no more orphaned headers at the end of a page
• HIP-261 If the Section Continued feature is enabled the "continued" text is added into parenthesis and lowercased to follow standard formatting guidelines.
• HIP-275 Upload report to HIP Office, ISN and HIP Cloud removed the checkbox to upload the PDF and clarifies that the PDF always uploads. The HTML report is optional (though HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!)
• HIP-305 When using the Section Continued header feature there was an extra space above the section header that's been removed to match the first page in each section.
• HIP-343 Drag and drop on the film strip INSERTS the image being dragged into the new location instead of swapping the two images. 
• HIP-410 Clicking the X on the Cover Page Designer prompts if you want to exit without saving changes. Previously nothing happened.
• HIP-435 The Glossary feature is now applied to photo caption text as well.
• HIP-484 Angled brackets << >> have been removed from the view when inserting lists or working on the list editor to reduce any confusion and clean things up.
• HIP-491 Increased size of Add/Edit Comment and Add/Edit List fields to make it easier to see entire narratives at once.
• HIP-544 Setup the spellcheck ignore and add to dictionary features to take effect immediately instead of waiting for a HIP restart.
• HIP-554 Clicking on a photo within the Photos tab of HIP will show a much larger image, 100% of pixels by default. This can be changed to be even larger under the Application Settings menu. Depending on your monitor resolution 150-200% of images will still look good. This only affects your view when working on the report.
• HIP-598 Changed the startup timeout for HIP to 2 minutes. Some older, slower machines were taking more than 60 seconds so HIP would error out.
• HIP-599 Batch Add Photos will now ignore hidden files. Some digital cameras create hidden files that were images so HIP was importing them previously.
• HIP-608 Country field added into the Agents address book.
• HIP-615 Updated to the new version of the HomeBinder API to ensure the integration continues to work.
• HIP-625 On the summary section and item names will be pushed to the next page if no content can go with it. This prevents orphan titles.
• HIP-644 Video in the PDF has been changed from playing within the PDFs to popping up in the default video player on the device. This ensures video works in PDFs (when used in a full PDF viewer like Adobe Reader) without Flash. Video plays embedded as before in the HTML version of the report.
• HIP-647 An X was added in the Lists dropdown as some users were confused on how to close a list that had no comment to select or if they didn't want to change the selection.
• HIP-658 New option to Add PDF to the report bookmarks added on a per-document level.
• HIP-659 Added an option to rearrange columns on Section Colors & Print Order and have that order save during future inspections.
• HIP-665 HON (Home Owners Network) has been removed from the Report Upload button since they no longer exist as a separate entity (they were acquired by Porch).
• HIP-675 HIP Office orders sort correctly when you click on the date header.
• HIP-689 You can now select multiple sections under Section Colors & Print Order and move them up/down all at once.
• HIP-694 Select All button added under Report Settings => Section Colors & Print Order to select all sections at one time.
• HIP-716 Photo editor now scales the view larger images down so they can be annotated but the original file size remains for the report. This was required for the new higher resolution photo options from the desktop and HIP Mobile
• HIP-719 Eliminate item titles that are orphaned by themselves at the end of a page. If no narratives fit with the item title then the item title gets pushed to the next page.
• HIP-723 Added the option to wrap tabs to the next line for narrative and photo tabs, on a Mac. This has existed on Windows for a long time but wasn't possible on Mac before. This option can be turned on/off under the Application Settings button.
• HIP-724 HIP Office orders are now listed in reverse order number when you click on Import Order from HIP Office

Bug Fixes

• HIP-20 Conflict between using the "Section Continued" feature and Digital Stationery resolved
• HIP-79 Fix issue with the first narrative within an item apply bold, italic or underline properly when using the Advanced Color feature
• HIP-81 Fixed extra space that appeared above some headers when at the top of the page but not on others.
• HIP-193 Removed large dropdown box that appeared when you clicked for a photo caption and there were no captions. This ended up covering other areas of the page slowing things down.
• HIP-260 Fixed issue that could cause the page number on the summary to point to the page with photos instead of the beginning of the item on the summary in certain instances.
• HIP-417 Fixed issue causing an extra page when inserting a full 8.5x11 PDF into a report and the Continued Section header option is enabled.
• HIP-440 On the Cover Page Designer the slider for image size allowed images to appear on the cover larger than they appeared on the designer preview.
• HIP-504 When clicking on Download Inspection the field showing where the report was being saved didn't appear on all screen resolutions.
• HIP-522 Turning off Advanced Colors was still showing the colors in the report if narratives were set. This will allow colors to be used within the report for visual separation but if Advanced Colors are off they will not show in the clients report.
• HIP-540 Fixed issue with Linked Images when the damage panel and tab name were the same.
• HIP-583 Fixed font blurriness that occurred when adding text onto an image. This was more obvious on Macs but did occur on Windows as well.
• HIP-590 Fixed an issue if a leading or trailing space was added to new words being added into the dictionary that would cause the spellcheck to stop working.
• HIP-596 The Glossary feature was set up to highlight a word/phrase before whether it was typed exactly as used in the glossary or had an S on the end for plural words. This meant that if you had "CU" in the glossary it would highly the "cus" in "customer". This has been changed to only highlight for the glossary if the plural s is the end of the word.
• HIP-610 Real Estate Agent properly selected from address book when importing form ISN and it's the first time the agent has been added into the address book.
• HIP-611 If using a full page Stationary and adding a full page PDF document into the report the document will now appear on top. Formally the stationary was appearing on top of the pdf document.
• HIP-619 Fixed issue with that could occur with the bottom text of one section to run up to the section title icon. Added more spacing to improve appearance.
• HIP-620 Web links in a report that don't start with www will now be clickable. Links that break across multiple lines will also now work as well. We still recommend using a URL Shortener to make links look nicer but either way they'll work.
• HIP-624 Fixed an issue with Linked Images where you couldn't add new linked images into a copy of a section until HIP had been restarted.
• HIP-626 Large files can now be uploaded to HIP Office without any file size limits
• HIP-629 Fixed issue causing Batch Import taking a long time to start making it appear to be frozen.
• HIP-642 HIP Office now imports the state correctly when the state name has two words in it (i.e. New York).
• HIP-648 Issue fixed when moving templates between Mac and Windows that involved linked images. Macs use a forward slash and Windows use backslashes in file names which was causing issues.
• HIP-650 Fixed photos not being moveable within the photo strip after deleting a comment as well as a problem with images zooming in on their own after moving other photos.
• HIP-662 Improved the order batch imports occur in to include full alphanumeric and pure numeric sorts. There were issues in the past with the sort where 1.jpg would be followed by 11.jpg instead of 2. This was alphabetically correct but not the desired effect.
• HIP-667 Extra line (newline) missing between black & red narratives when the newline option was selected as an item separator.
• HIP-678 Fixed Images appearing black in the report when the images have transparency AND an image icon was added to them.
• HIP-708 Fixed bug causing reports not to generate on rare occasions when split items across multiple pages is enabled.
• HIP-722 Random characters inserted into the TREC introduction has been fixed. This was due to bad encoding of the TREC intro