AI inspection review for Protractor

Overview

A Protractor inspection is a structured record of what a technician decided; the photos beside it are the record of what the technician saw. The inspection comes onto the work order as a line item, the technician or advisor codes each row O, S or R and types a note, and the DVI carries the images and videos that go out to the customer by email or text. Both halves are true and neither reads the other. RapidEye reads the images, plus the vehicle, the work order and the date from Protractor, and returns one finding per issue in them: the part of the vehicle, what the image shows, how serious it looks, and what to do about it.

How it works with Protractor

Protractor builds the visit around the work order: concerns and inspections go on at write-up, the technician works the sheet, the advisor turns findings into service packages, and the document posts as an invoice. RapidEye reads at the point in that run where images exist, and hands back findings before the advisor is done talking to the customer.

• The images on the DVI. This is the main read. A technician photographs a seeping axle seal, a cracked serpentine belt, a tyre down to the wear bars. RapidEye returns one finding per issue in those images with the spot on the vehicle, the kind of problem, a severity and the frame it came from, so an advisor building the recommendation has the list in front of them rather than scrolling a gallery.
• Inspection lines with no image behind them. A row coded and noted but not photographed is the row a customer argues with later. RapidEye reports where an inspection has findings without images, by inspection type and by technician, which is the fastest way to see which bays document and which ones do not.
• Images against the vehicle's own history. Protractor holds the service history for the vehicle, so a car that has been in before has a past. RapidEye compares this visit's images to the last ones of the same vehicle and says what changed since: a stain that was a drip and is now a puddle, a boot that was intact.
• Deferred work, with the picture attached. Protractor carries deferred work forward, a concern or service estimated and not sold, and the DVI can mark declined repairs as next-visit recommendations. RapidEye keeps the image that made the case the first time next to the line, so on the next visit the advisor can show the customer the same part six months on.
• Bodywork and arrival condition. Where a shop photographs the vehicle on arrival, RapidEye reads that set too and reports damage that was already there. That is the evidence a shop wants when a customer picks up a car and points at a scuff.

Each finding names the vehicle and the work order, the spot, the kind of problem, how serious it looks, the image, and a suggested next step. Each finding is delivered to the RapidEye dashboard, plus Slack or email when routed for the service desk. What happens in Protractor afterwards is yours: a service package added on the Inspection tab, a note, a deferred line for the next visit. Still photos are just the most frequent input. Teams that shoot video, that walk a lot with a phone, or that want findings scored against an inspection sheet of their own, get that configured with us on the first call.

How to connect Protractor to RapidEye

1. Your inspections, set up in Protractor. The inspections your technicians run are defined under Setup, then Work Order Setup, then Inspections, each with a profit center, a service category and its own list of items. That definition is what tells RapidEye which sheet an image belongs to.
2. Images attached on the mobile DVI. Your technicians keep photographing findings on the DVI the way they do now, one image or video per finding, before the advisor sends the recommendation. If a bay does not photograph findings yet, RapidEye sends a capture link that opens in any phone browser with nothing to install.
3. A Rapid Eye user. In Protractor, open Setup, then Security, then Users, and create a user named Rapid Eye on a role that can see work orders and inspections. The Connect button has the details.

Nothing about the bay changes. Technicians use the same DVI on the same phone, advisors write the same work orders, and the first findings arrive once the first inspections close.

How a Protractor inspection is recorded, from concern to invoice

Checked against Protractor's help centre and product pages, September 2026.

Protractor is shop management software for aftermarket repair shops, single and multi-location, and its inspections are not a separate module: they live inside the work order, which Protractor defines as the document that records inspection results, parts, labor and sublet sales, and which posts as the invoice at the end. According to Protractor's help centre documentation (protractor.com), inspections correspond to service concerns and go onto the work order through the New Work Order wizard, where the advisor is prompted with a script asking the customer what they want looked at. Each inspection is a checklist defined in setup, so every technician reports the same items in the same order, and the results appear behind the Inspections tab at the bottom of the work order pane.

• Concern at write-up
• ›
• Inspection line on the work order
• ›
• Technician records results and images
• ›
• Service packages added
• ›
• Inspection Complete
• ›
• Posted as an invoice

The run as Protractor's help centre describes it. Save and Close on a finished inspection offers Inspection Complete as the status; RapidEye reads at the highlighted step.

What O, S and R actually mean

The three letters at the top of the inspection item list are the part of Protractor an operator lives in, and they come from outside the software. They are the Motorist Assurance Program conventions, and Protractor's help centre gives each one a meaning. Inspection results are yours to define: Protractor ships without any, recommends these three, and lets you set a code, a label, the text used in reports, and a background colour, so a long sheet shows every Required line at a glance. There is a comment tab too, where a shop can preset the phrases a technician picks from, which Protractor notes are uniform across results rather than tailored to one.

Meanings as Protractor's help centre documents them. Colours are illustrative: the background colour of each result is a setting in your database.

Does Protractor's DVI hold photos, and who looks at them?

It holds them, and the customer is who they were built for. Protractor's product pages describe the DVI as a mobile-optimized tool that lets a technician recommend services with detailed notes and visuals, with canned notes and a check-all feature to keep the sheet moving, high-quality images and videos of repair needs, and an advisor who presents the result to the customer by email or text. Declined repairs can be marked as next-visit recommendations. Protractor also documents an Advanced DVI through its AutoServe1 integration, which attaches detailed photos and videos to estimates and adds two-way texting and customizable templates.

So the images exist, they are good, and they do their job: they win the approval at the counter. What no shop has time for afterwards is a second pass over them, and that is a fact about a working day rather than about the software. The evidence has already been captured; nobody at three locations and forty cars a day is going to reopen it. RapidEye is the reader. It goes over every inspection's images, on every work order, and tells you what they show, which is how a photo taken to close one sale ends up also being a quality record, a claim record and a training record for the shop.

Protractor integration FAQ