NetworkIQ

It reads the switch and names every live device before the engineer has put a bag down. Everything that answers the network is on the screen with a name against it, which is most of the job that used to be done by walking the house.

The engineer then walks the panel, pulling one lead at a time while the tool writes each row. One person, and no second engineer standing in a bedroom holding a tone generator. The rows are written as they happen rather than copied up afterwards, which is where the errors used to come from.

Sockets that should not be pulled are flagged before anyone reaches them. On the dead runs, the ones with nothing answering, it measures cable length, so a break part way along is a number rather than a morning of guessing. It separates what is broken now from what is one event away, because those are different jobs and only one of them is urgent.

What comes out is a schedule, a label file and a report. The label file goes to the printer and the panel gets labelled the same afternoon, which is the part that stops the next engineer walking into the same house with no paperwork.