Smart Comments
Smart Comments (route/smart-comments) controls how comments and findings render visually in the final inspection report PDF. It’s the styling layer that sits between the raw narratives in your library and the rendered output — color schemes for severity categories, photo placement rules, keyword-based classification, and a few report-level title fields.
The Smart Comments page is also where Keyword Management lives — they share the same UI surface.
When you use it
- First-week setup — pick a color scheme that matches your brand and configure how photos render in the report
- As your library grows — add keyword rules that auto-classify comments by category (Safety / Major / Minor / Maintenance)
- For client-specific reports — override defaults for high-touch clients who want custom rendering
Screen layout
[SCREENSHOT: smart-comments-page.png — desktop, the Smart Comments page with three vertical sections: top fields for report title and inspector info, middle settings for output format and color scheme, bottom section for keyword management and report content preview.] The page has several stacked sections (the page itself shows them as columns on wider viewports):- Report-level fields — Report Title, Property Address, Inspector Name, Inspection Date (used in live previews)
- Smart Comments Settings — Output Format, Color Scheme, Photo Placement, Keyword-based color coding
- Report Content Preview — Live preview reflecting your settings
- Keyword Management — Classification rules (see Keyword Management)
Report-level fields
These are preview-only — they populate the live preview in the Report Content Preview section so you can see how your styling decisions look against real-feeling sample text. The actual report renders use real inspection data; this page just lets you test with placeholder values.
Changes here don’t save to any inspection record — they’re purely for previewing.
Smart Comments Settings
Output Format
A drop-down with format options for the rendered PDF. Defaults to your tenant’s standard. Options may include:- Standard — default layout
- Compact — tighter spacing for shorter reports
- Expanded — extra whitespace for client-friendly readability
Color Scheme
Defines the palette used for severity categorization, headers, and accents. Picking a color scheme here drives:- The color of section header bars
- The fill color of color-coded comment cards
- Highlight colors for in-summary findings
Photo Placement
Controls where photos appear relative to the narrative in the rendered report. Three options:
Most inspectors leave this on Inline — clients prefer seeing the photo next to the finding text. End of Section is useful for sparse reports; End of Report is rare.
Keyword-based color coding
A toggle:
Turning this on activates the keyword-rule system. Defining rules without enabling color coding has no visual effect.
Report Content Preview
The Preview pane shows a live miniature of how the styled report will look with current settings + sample fields populated. Changes elsewhere on the page update the preview within a moment. The preview is a simplified rendering — actual PDF output may differ slightly in font kerning and image rendering. For a faithful preview, save your changes and generate a PDF from a real inspection in Inspection Reviewer.Keyword Management (embedded section)
Smart Comments hosts the keyword-rule editor as an in-page section. It’s documented separately in Keyword Management because it’s a substantial subsystem. Briefly:- Define a Category (e.g. Safety, Major Concern, Minor Issue, Maintenance, Informational)
- Add Keywords as a comma-separated list
- When the keyword-based color coding setting is on, the renderer tags each comment with its highest-matching category and colors it accordingly
Saving
The Smart Comments page uses explicit save. Click Save (typically in the page header or footer) to commit changes. Saves apply tenant-wide — every future PDF generated for this tenant uses the new styling. Unsaved changes are flagged with an indicator. Navigating away prompts confirmation.Errors and recovery
What this page does NOT do
- It does not edit individual narratives. That’s Narrative Collections.
- It does not handle per-inspection report editing. That’s Inspection Reviewer.
- It does not configure templates. That’s Templates Overview.
Related articles
- Intelligence Hub Overview
- Narrative Collections — the narratives the rendering rules apply to
- Keyword Management — the categorization sub-section
- Visual Page Designer — page-level styling complements comment-level styling here