Tape is a collaboration platform that excels at creating fully customizable workspaces with powerful low-code automations to run your entire business. Its flexibility and ease of use enables solar companies to build workflow automation software that is completely tailored to their business processes.
When it comes to solar project management, there is no one-size-fits-all. With Tape, you aren't constrained to the platform's idea of what your processes should look like. Instead, you are in complete control of your business structure and workflows.
We provide a free Solar Project Management workspace, which is a starting point for companies looking to get up and running quickly. This is a solution that can work out-of-the-box, and can also be built out even further to fully cover your team's project life cycle.
👉 Click here to view a demo of our Solar Project Management workspace
This workspace can be copied to your own Tape organization for free via the "Duplicate" button at the top of that page.
Need some help getting started? Please get in touch and we are happy to assist.
Overview of our template workspace
Projects: The central hub
We use a Projects app as the container for all information related to the project, with separate apps for project stages connected to it. This keeps all project information quickly accessible from one place, while also giving your various teams the ability to keep their own work segmented and organized.
Stage Apps: NTP/Finance, Site Surveys, Designs, Permits, Installs and Inspections
A major benefit to keeping these apps separate is that you will typically have different teams in each respective stage, and this gives a clean and straightforward area for those teams to get their job done.
Team members can use filters to show only the items assigned to them.
You can also use the "Show in calendars" option to ensure that team members will see their events from their Tape calendar.
Metrics App
The Metrics app automatically tracks the dates that certain events occur. This allows you to build reports on your project life cycle, such as the number of Site Surveys completed each month, quarter etc. You can also add calculations to determine the number of days between different stages. For example, you can calculate the number of days between project create and install complete, then create a report that shows the average value across all of your projects.
Workflow Automations for template workspace
Consider these as a few examples of what is possible in automating your space, but ultimately you decide which flows and processes work the best for your team.
Projects
- On Project Create, create an item in NTP/Finance and in Site Survey so your team can get to work on the project right away
- When a project stage changes, create a new item in the respective app and link it to the project
- When a project moves to the Install stage, assign a task to the Project Manager to set up an install date and time with the customer
- When a project moves to the Inspection stage, assign a task to the Project Manager to set up an inspection date and time
- When a project moves to the PTO stage, assign a task to the Project Coordinator to notify the customer
- If a project has been in the same stage for 2 weeks, create a task for the Project Manager to review. This helps prevent projects from falling through the cracks
Site Surveys
- On the day before a site survey, send an email to the site surveyor with the appointment information
- On the evening of the site survey, if the site surveyor has not yet added any notes, send them an email reminding them to add their notes from the appointment
- When the Site Survey is complete, set the Project stage to Design and assign a task to the Design team
Permits
- When the status changes to "Permit Obtained," update the Project stage to Install (also triggers flow above in Projects, notifying the Project Coordinator to schedule the install)
Installs
- On the day before an install, send an email to the install crew manager with the install information
- On the evening of the install, if the install has not been marked as complete, send the install crew manager an email reminding them to update the installation item in Podio
- When the install is complete, set Project stage to Inspection (triggers above flow in Projects, notifying the Project Coordinator)
Inspections
- On the day before an inspection, send an email to the inspector with the inspection information
- On the evening of the inspection, if the inspection was not marked as either "Passed" or "Issues Found," send an email to the inspector reminding them to update the installation item in Podio with the inspection result
- When the inspection is complete, set Project stage to Awaiting PTO