We're excited! 360-degree virtual rooms coming to Alpha Tracker, Tracker Mobile & the Client Portal

360-degree cameras are seriously cool.  We're using them to give all of our Alpha Tracker asbestos surveying users access to cost-effective virtual room technology.  

Try it for yourself!  Click to view the interactive 360-degree room view of one of our meeting spaces in our Telford office.  We took this photo, and annotated it, with Tracker Mobile. 

You can see it in action in the video, below.  By the way, when you spin the room in Alpha Tracker it is buttery smooth... the blog makes it look jerky, but that's just an after-effect of the blog video processor.

Asbestos surveyors will be able to capture 360-degree views of rooms while surveying and send the photos in via Tracker Mobile.  Surveyors or back-office staff will be able to "hotspot" the photos so that client portal users will be able to walk through the rooms and see virtual asbestos sample labels before clicking to see more details.  Very cool indeed.

We're keeping costs down by using off-the-shelf cameras such as the Insta360 One X.

One of the excellent Insta360 cameras

Want to know more or would you like to be a beta-tester?  Get in touch with Robin.

Alpha Legal has been updated - it's a big one!

The latest Alpha Legal update is now live and it's a big one!

Alpha Legal meeting planner, Zapier, Intellifo

Look out for:

1. a new Meeting Planner to help you to find a suitable time to meet your clients - ideal for Trustee meetings, for example, where there are many attendees, all with busy diaries!
   
   
2. Zapier integration so that you can automatically send forms to clients and trigger Zaps when clients return information to you.  Not sure what Zapier is?  Take a look at this blog post or go to https://zapier.com/
   
   
3. integration with the IFA tool Intelliflo so that you can share and sign documents via Alpha Legal direct from your Intelliflo portal
   
   
4. a new way to send personalised ID requests to clients, to help those for whom the standard set of ID documents just isn't appropriate (for example, non-UK residents).

Each of these new features deserves a blog post in its own right, so watch this space for more information about how you can take advantage to improve your business workflow.

Need date & time stamps on your asbestos survey report photos? Or photos taken during air monitoring work?

The new asbestos air monitoring regulations (HSG248) state that analysts need to "timestamp" any photos they have taken.

In addition, some of our asbestos consultancy clients using Alpha Tracker prefer photos in asbestos reports to be timestamped too.

Fortunately, there is an easy solution whether your staff are using Android or Apple (iOS) devices.

Try "Timestamp Camera Free" - for Android here, or "Timestamp Camera" for Apple (iOS) here.

Both apps review really well and work seamlessly with our Tracker Mobile asbestos data capture software.

It's easy to timestamp your asbestos photos

Need help or not sure how to set this up for you or your asbestos site staff?  Get in touch (UK/Aus or NZ).

Want to know about our partnership with ID verification specialist TrustID?

You can now securely request ID documents from clients and verify them with ID specialist TrustID all within Alpha Legal.

You can now collect ID documents and verify them - all within Alpha Legal

It's such an easy process for you and your clients.  It's secure and really cost-effective, giving you the confidence that your client is who they say they are and that you have onboarded them without fuss and without needing to see them in person. 

Want to know more? Click here! https://www.alphalegal.co.uk/alphalegalwithtrustID

Start the fans! Start Software celebrates their 15th "crystal" birthday at The Crystal Maze, Manchester

Start Software is 15 years old this month.  Where did that time go!?!

We've grown year-on-year and now employ twenty or so staff and contractors in the UK, Australia, Indonesia & the US and have built hundreds of software systems for clients all around the world.  We're proud of every system we've created but especially, of course, our market-leading asbestos software Alpha Tracker and our secure communication system for the legal industry, Alpha Legal.

As a 15th anniversary is traditionally celebrated with a gift of crystal, we decided to visit the Crystal Maze Experience in Manchester and we had a (crystal) ball.  The Crystal Maze is a cult TV game show with teams competing through a series of challenges to finally reach a wind-filled giant dome to collect gold tokens flying through the air - hence the host's catchphrase of "Start the fans!".

Thank you to all of our clients, partners, staff and contractors who have helped us to be successful and grow every year since 2006.  It's been such a satisfying and challenging journey and we've got a long way to go yet!

Left-to-right: Kim, Catherine, Russ, Robin, Adam & Elaine

Dan, Jack, Jess, Zac, James & Tom

Adam, Russ, Robin, Catherine, Kim & Elaine (in front)

Two more New Zealand asbestos consultancies are switching to Alpha Tracker

We've had notification from two more asbestos consultancies in New Zealand that they would like to switch to asbestos software Alpha Tracker.

Alpha Tracker support for New Zealand customers is provided by our Adelaide (SA) office

We'll be posting more updates as we prepare the asbestos report templates and train their professional asbestos field staff & administrators.  Watch this space!

More Alpha Legal records broken - it's been a record week

We've just had the busiest week ever at Alpha Legal:

• another 1,000 clients have been ID-checked using our ID verification process
  
  
• another 1,000 secure forms (including requests for bank details) have been processed
  
  
• a record number of will writers, estate planners, solicitors, accountants and estate agents are now using Alpha Legal as part of their day-to-day processes.

It's been a record-breaking week at Alpha Legal

Can we help you to secure your client communications?  Are you struggling to work in the new normal where clients don't expect to come into the office and, instead, expect to communicate with you from home?

Register with Alpha Legal with no risk and no commitment - give us a try!