Setting up a home's baseline

1The baseline

1.1Three kinds of reference

A home's baseline can hold three kinds of reference:

None of the three is required, and more is better. The Baseline card counts which rooms have a reference, so you can see where a home is thin before an inspection is.

1.2The Baseline card

Every property's page has a Baseline card. It shows how many of the home's rooms have a reference, each of the three sources with its state, and the rooms themselves. A room with nothing yet reads No reference yet, with a button to add photos straight into it.

A home with no reference at all shows Add a baseline for the home's name instead, with Add a 3D scan, Add photos and Record a video. On a phone the card is a single line, such as 9 of 10 rooms covered; tap it to open the same screens.

On the Properties list, the Baseline column shows the same three sources for every home, and the No baseline filter lists the homes that have none of them yet.

2A good baseline

A baseline only helps where it shows the home the way your walkthroughs see it. These recommendations follow from how RapidEye compares each inspection with the baseline.

2.1How RapidEye uses it

Every inspection is compared room by room with the home's baseline and with its most recent inspections, up to three of them. For each room of today's walkthrough, RapidEye picks the baseline images that show that same room, and uses up to 15 of them. A baseline photo that does not look like any part of today's walkthrough is not used for that inspection.

So the best baseline is not the biggest one. It is the one whose photos look like what your cleaners film.

2.2Which source to use when

More than one source is better than one. They add up room by room, and the Baseline card shows which rooms are covered.

2.3Photos: how many, and what they show

• Every room a cleaner films, including hallways, laundry, garage, patios, and pool or hot tub areas. A room with no reference is a room with nothing to compare against.
• Wide views, not details. Stand in the doorway for the whole room, then take one photo of each wall as the walkthrough would show it. A tight close-up of a lamp or a tap rarely matches anything in a walkthrough, so it is seldom used.
• Insides the cleaner opens: fridge, freezer, oven, cabinets, vanities, closets. Without a reference for them, a change inside is harder to flag.
• What guests move, take or break in view: remotes, lamps, art, rugs, cushions, the coffee maker, hot tub covers and latches.
• Up to 15 baseline images per room are used on each inspection, shared between your photos, 3D scan views and the baseline video. Past that, more photos of the same room add nothing. Cover each wall once rather than repeating one view.
• Rooms that look alike, such as two matching bedrooms, can be mistaken for each other. Frame each so what sets it apart is in view: the window, the art, the layout.

Both images are the same example room from RapidEye's website, not a customer's home.

2.4Light and angles

• Turn on every light in the room. Daylight or lamps does not matter; dark does.
• Wipe the lens first. A smudged lens blurs every photo.
• Hold the phone at chest height, level and pointed at the room, the way cleaners film. Photos taken from the same height and direction as the walkthrough match it best.

2.5Guest-ready, not photo-ready

Capture the home exactly as a guest should find it after a turnover: beds made, towels out, supplies stocked, trash cans and toilet brushes where they live. Do not dress it for a photo shoot.

RapidEye reports what differs from the baseline, so anything added or hidden for a shoot shows up on every inspection. Flowers placed for the shoot read as missing, and a trash can hidden for the shoot reads as something new. This is why your own photos usually beat a professional shoot.

2.6Walking a baseline video

1. On the home's Baseline card, press Video (on a home with no baseline yet, Record a video), then choose Record now under Add baseline walkthrough. To replace a baseline video, open Video and press Record new baseline.
2. Turn on every light and wipe the lens.
3. Walk the home slower and more completely than a normal inspection: every room, every wall, every corner, and every inside, about two seconds per view.
4. Record the whole home as one continuous video. Pause if you are interrupted; do not submit pieces.
5. Keep the page open until the upload finishes.
6. When it has been processed, check the rooms RapidEye marked (6.2).

The route and filming technique are the same as for any inspection: see the recording reference.

2.7When to refresh it

Refresh the baseline when what "correct" looks like has changed:

• when a home is onboarded, once setup is finished;
• after a renovation, refurnishing or restaging;
• when furniture, art, appliances or décor change for good.

Refreshing means replacing what is out of date, not only adding. Photos and a 3D scan are used on every inspection until you remove them, so an old photo of a sofa that is gone reads as a difference every time. Remove outdated photos (4.6), replace the scan (5.2), and record a new baseline video (6.1).

2.8A home with no baseline

RapidEye still inspects a home with no baseline. It finds damage and mess it can see in today's walkthrough, and from the second inspection on it compares with the home's recent inspections.

What it cannot do without a baseline is know how the home is supposed to look. An item missing since before the first inspection, or a lamp nobody ever filmed, cannot be flagged as missing, and the first inspection has nothing to compare against at all. To find these homes, filter the Properties list by No baseline.

2.9Owner stays and guest stays

A home has one baseline. If a home switches between how its owner keeps it and how guests find it, build the baseline in the guest-ready setup, since that is what every turnover restores.

The inspection right after an owner stay may show the owner's changes as findings. That is expected. If the owner's stay changes the home for good, such as new furniture or art moved to another room, refresh the baseline (2.7) so the change is not flagged on every turnover.

3Rooms

3.1Where rooms come from

You do not type the room list in. RapidEye suggests it from what the home already has: the rooms your baseline video walks through, in the order you walked them. Without a video, it uses your Airbnb photo tour, then your Breezeway rooms, then the rooms it finds in your photos.

3.2Suggestions and your changes

Open any room from the card to see the room view: every room on the left, and that room's photos, 3D views and video clips on the right. Anything RapidEye placed for you carries a Suggested badge. Press Looks right to confirm it, or select it and use Move to room.

Your changes are never overwritten. Once you confirm or move something, later suggestions leave it where you put it. Anything RapidEye could not place, and anything you move to Not in a room yourself, sits there. RapidEye does not suggest a room again for anything you moved there.

3.3Editing rooms

Use + Add room at the bottom of the room list. Each room's menu has Rename, Merge into… and Delete. Merging moves everything into the other room. Deleting a room moves its photos, views and clips to Not in a room, so nothing is lost, and RapidEye then suggests another room for them. Room names are unique within a home.

4Adding photos

Press Add photos in the room view, or on a room the card lists as No reference yet so the new photos land in that room. There are up to four places to add photos from.

4.1Upload photos

Upload from your computer or phone: JPEG, PNG, WebP or iPhone HEIC, up to 15 MB each. Each file shows Saved, Already here or the reason it was refused. A file that is refused never stops the others.

Photos of the home as guests leave it catch more than staged listing photos.

4.2From your Airbnb listing

Paste the listing link, which looks like airbnb.com/rooms/12345. RapidEye copies the listing's photos, and uses Airbnb's own photo tour titles ("Full kitchen", "Bedroom 2") to place them in rooms.

4.3From a Google Drive folder

Paste the folder link. The folder must be shared as Anyone with the link. Photos in its subfolders are included. Videos and other files are skipped. If the folder has no photos RapidEye can use, the message says how many files it skipped.

4.4Pull from your PMS

For a Breezeway home the card reads Pull from Breezeway. It refreshes the home's Breezeway listing photos, adding only the ones RapidEye does not already have.

The card is always there. When RapidEye can't pull photos for a home, it is greyed out with the reason, for example This home isn't linked to a Breezeway property., and a Contact support link. Upload, Airbnb and Drive still work for that home.

4.5What an import reports

Airbnb, Drive and Breezeway imports run in the background, one at a time per home. You can close the baseline while one runs, and its progress stays on screen while you work elsewhere in the app. When the import finishes, you see how many photos were added, how many were placed in rooms, how many need a room, how many were already here, and any that could not be saved. An import that adds nothing says why.

The same photo is only ever kept once per home, whatever it came from, so importing again is safe.

4.6Removing photos

In the room view, select photos and press Delete. They are gone from every inspection from then on. An import that is running while you delete will not bring them back, but importing the same source again later adds them again. Only photos can be deleted: 3D views and video stretches can be moved to another room, not deleted.

To take out every photo from one source, open Photos on the card, find the source (your uploads, Airbnb, Google Drive or Breezeway), and press Remove. It asks first, then removes all of that source's photos. Each source also has Re-import (Airbnb and Drive) or Pull again (Breezeway), and your uploads have Add more.

53D scan

5.1Importing a scan

Open 3D scan on the card, paste the Matterport link, and press Import scan. The space must be Public or Unlisted in Matterport. An import takes about 30 seconds to 2 minutes. RapidEye then suggests a room for each scan position's views, the same way it does for photos.

5.2Replacing or removing it

A home has one 3D scan. Replace with a new link imports the new scan, and RapidEye keeps using the old one until the new one has imported.

While a home's first scan imports, Cancel import stops it. A replacement cannot be cancelled once it starts; RapidEye keeps using the scan you had until the new one has imported.

Remove scan deletes the scan's views, and RapidEye stops using them from the next inspection. Photos and video are not affected.

6Baseline video

6.1Which video is the baseline

The home's baseline video is its newest finished baseline recording. To replace it, open Video on the card and press Record new baseline. How to record a good one is in the recording reference.

6.2Rooms in the walk

Once a baseline video is processed, RapidEye marks which room each stretch of the walk is in, and asks: RapidEye marked 7 rooms in this walk. Look right? Press Looks right to confirm, or Fix something to edit. A room you walk through twice gets two stretches. Each stretch in a room is one of that room's clips: open the room and they are listed under Video clips, and until any stretch has a room the Video source counts clips instead of rooms.

In the editor, select a stretch and Give it a room, or mark it Not in a room for hallways and stairs. Split at playhead cuts a stretch in two, and Merge with next joins it to the one after. Drag a boundary to move it. Undo steps back one edit. These edits change nothing until you press Save; Discard drops them. Reset to suggested is different: it asks first, then puts every stretch back to RapidEye's cut straight away, dropping the rooms you set, and takes a minute or two.

On a computer, Space plays, the arrow keys move one frame, S splits, and ⌘Z undoes.

7Who can change a baseline

Owners and admins can add, move and remove anything in a baseline. Members see the same card, rooms and video, with nothing on them that changes anything. Anyone on your account can still record a baseline walkthrough when they add a home, or re-record one from the home's inspection history. Roles are explained in adding people to your account.

8Messages you might see