Last Updated: September 15, 2026
Start here: InspectAI is designed to keep Experts in control. Visual estimates are conditional, and no customer sees an estimate until someone on your team reviews and approves it.
1. What the Workspace Does
InspectAI brings intake, estimate review, follow-up, scheduling, and customer records into one workspace. The usual path: a customer submits a description with optional photos, your team reviews, sends the estimate when ready, confirms a time, and keeps the record current.
Overview
Your command center for incoming visual leads, review queue, conditional value, upcoming appointments, widget preview, and current labor-rate context.
Leads
An Expert-controlled board for reviewing visual requests, adjusting labor, approving estimates, following counter-offers, and tracking work through completion.
Calendar & Appointments
Availability controls, pending service requests, confirmed visits, alternate time proposals, customer conversations, and an upcoming-jobs feed.
Customers
A searchable client workspace for contact details, property addresses, total jobs, lifecycle status, completion, and safe archival.
Catalog
Your parts catalog, pricing inputs, and markup context for more consistent conditional estimate preparation.
Settings & Billing
Business profile, labor rate, pricing rules, public-widget branding, embed code, trial status, and subscription management.
2. Set Up Your Workspace
Complete your business profile
In Settings, enter your business name, industry, labor rate, and pricing rules. InspectAI uses them for each conditional estimate. Review when your costs change.
Build your parts catalog
Use Catalog to add common parts, costs, and markups. A current catalog gives estimates a clearer starting point. You still review the final estimate and confirm availability, scope, and local pricing.
Brand the public widget
In Settings, add your logo, primary color, corner style, and estimate-branding preferences. The public widget and customer estimate use this branding. Copy the script snippet onto your website to start collecting requests.
3. Work a Visual Lead From Request to Estimate
When a customer submits the widget, InspectAI records their contact details, address, written description, and any photos. The request enters your workspace as Awaiting review. It does not immediately reveal an estimate to the customer.
- Open the lead. Review the description, photos, contact details, address, identified issue, confidence, parts, labor, and conditional total.
- Check the available context. If photos don’t show enough, request a clearer image. With no photos, confirm scope with the customer before relying on a description-based estimate.
- Adjust the labor estimate when needed. Update labor in half-hour steps in the lead detail view. InspectAI recalculates the total from your labor rate and parts.
- Approve and send. Select Approve & send to customer only when your team is ready. The lead moves to Estimate sent with a secure customer link.
The estimate stays conditional: a visual starting point, not an inspection, binding promise, safety assessment, or code determination.
4. Use the Customer Portal and Scheduling Flow
After you send an estimate, the customer can use a secure portal to review the live branded presentation, choose a primary service window, optionally choose a secondary window, send a question, and share up to three bounded image or PDF attachments without opening a new email chain. The portal follows your business branding and keeps the conversation associated with the relevant lead. InspectAI does not use electronic signatures in the current estimate flow.
Open Calendar & Appointments to review the request. You can confirm the proposed time or select an available alternate slot and resend a counter-offer. Confirmed appointments occupy capacity; the available-slot logic excludes those confirmed visits. Appointment emails include a calendar invitation so the customer has the service details in a familiar format.
5. Manage Availability, Appointments, and Messages
Set service availability
Use the availability controls to choose open days, start and end hours, and slot duration. These recurring windows feed the public scheduling experience. Update them whenever your business hours or capacity change.
Read the calendar
Calendar date badges show confirmed and pending work at a glance. Select a date to view its service timeline. The right-side upcoming appointments feed remains useful even when a selected day has no bookings.
Keep conversations in one place
Open the message thread from an appointment or workspace notification to view the customer conversation. New message state refreshes automatically while the relevant screen is open. Customers can share screenshots or documents in the secure support portal, where image thumbnails and attachment labels make the thread easier to scan. Use the secure update control to reply from the Expert workspace; customers receive a portal link rather than needing to search through email history.
6. Keep Customer Records Current
The Customers workspace is your client relationship record. Search by name, contact detail, or property address. Open a record to edit name, email, phone, and address details. Blank address fields remain supported for older records; complete them when you have confirmed information.
Use Mark job completed when the active work is finished. Use archive only after reviewing the confirmation dialog. Archiving removes the customer and active leads from the working view while retaining historical information for administrative recovery.
7. A Simple Daily Operating Routine
Check the review queue
Open Leads or Overview and start with requests marked Awaiting review. Confirm the photo is usable and inspect the generated quote context.
Adjust and approve
Update labor time or estimate context where needed, then select Approve & send. Customers cannot see the estimate before this Expert action.
Keep the customer moving
Use the secure portal for messages and let the customer select a service window after the estimate has been sent.
Confirm the work
Review pending requests in Calendar & Appointments, confirm a workable slot, or send a counter-offer when the first option is unavailable.
Close the loop
Use Customers to maintain contact information, mark completed work, and safely archive records that no longer need to remain active.
8. Billing and Help
New workspaces start on the free Starter plan. Open Billing to see your plan and usage, start the seven-day no-card Pro trial, purchase additional seats, review purchase history, and manage an active subscription through the available billing controls. The trial cancels without a charge if no payment method is added before the trial ends. Owners can also use review templates and tenant-scoped operational reports to keep the team consistent and monitor request-to-scheduled trends.
For a technical explanation of data handling, secure portals, authentication, billing, and the visual-estimation pipeline, read the Security & Technical Overview. For questions about your account or rollout, contact support@automatingdna.com.