Applies to: All customers.
Steps 6 and 7 are the core capture at the pole: fill in the pole form, then measure the pole and attachment heights. The tutorials below show the full flow.
Pole measurement tutorial
Scale a high-accuracy pole from two known points
Measurement workflows (1)
Measurement workflows (2)
Step 6: Fill in the pole form
As you approach, strap the High Accuracy Stick to the pole (if using it). Get it up early so you can work around it.
Tap the pole in the app; it is already there from the import. A panel appears at the bottom; slide it up for the full data-entry form.
The fields below are a representative example of a joint-use form. Your exact fields, order, and dropdown choices come from your configuration.
Pole Type: Joint Use, Power, Telco, Drop, or Transmission.
Hallway Images: two shots. The Forward Span Hallway is taken as you walk up, looking toward the pole you are heading to. The Back Span Hallway is taken as you leave, looking back at the pole you just finished and the one behind it.
Side Image: the top half of the pole, from the top down to roughly where the comms space begins.
Cable Tag: zoom in on the comm space and photograph any cable tags, close enough to read them. These tags show who owns the cables, which is critical ownership data.
Grounding Image: a ground-level close-up at the base of the pole showing where the ground wire connects to the ground rod. Below the photo, choose Grounded, Broken Ground, or Not Grounded. Always take the photo regardless of condition.
Pole Tag: photograph every tag on the pole (power, telco, all of them). Below the photos, enter the power company tag number by hand, since it is needed quickly. If there are no tags, select No Pole Tag; this records that the pole was checked and had no tags rather than leaving it blank, and depending on your configuration it may flag the no-tags state in Katapult.
Birthmark Image: photograph the birthmark (the burned-in stamp or placard showing pole height, class, and species). Below the photo, enter the spec in the format height-class material (for example, 45-2 Southern Pine). If there is no birthmark, toggle No Birthmark to yes.
Ground Line Circumference: if there is no birthmark, wrap a tape measure around the base of the pole and enter the measurement. Take a photo of yourself holding the tape at the measurement for verification.
Upshots: place the phone against the pole facing straight up and capture front and back upshots. These record the angles of the lines coming off the pole, which pole-loading analysis needs.
Miscellaneous Image: anything on the pole that does not fit another category.
Attachment Type: New Attach or Overlash. This tells the designers what kind of situation they are dealing with.
Pole Condition: choose the condition from the dropdown.
Pole Transfer: yes or no. Is there a double-wood situation where a transfer from the old pole to the new pole is needed?
Notes: anything worth communicating (a pole tag not in the system, access issues, anything relevant).
Temperature: some pole owners require the temperature at time of collection. Enter it if the project requires it; you will be told if it applies.
SCID: the sequential pole number, assigned automatically.
Global ID: used for connecting pole data to other platforms such as ArcGIS.
About photos. There are two kinds: the measurement photo (the scaled photo you take during a measurement, used to compute heights) and documentation photos (everything else, like tags and grounding). Every photo is bound to its record. The app re-encodes photos and bakes in the correct orientation automatically when you capture them, so do not pre-edit or rotate them. Tap any photo to open a full-screen zoomable viewer, and delete and retake a bad one before you leave the pole.
Step 7: Measure the pole height and attachment heights
This is the core measurement. You take a scaled photo, set the pole height, then place and classify the attachment heights on that same photo.
Measure the pole height
If using the stick, it should already be strapped to the pole. Place the phone on the designated dot on the stick and capture the tilt; the app guides you through it. Then lift the phone off, place it back, and capture the tilt a second time to confirm the reading.
Step back from the pole (not nearly as far as Katapult requires) and fit the entire pole in the frame, with sky above and ground below.
The app AI-detects the two target discs on the stick and shows each one for you to confirm: choose Accept to place a marker there, or Skip to reject it and see the next candidate. If the AI doesn't find them (or you skip both), place the two markers yourself. In Standard mode you place the base and top references directly, without this AI step.
A yellow reference line appears over the pole; use the left and right arrows to tilt it so it lines up with the pole's lean. Then drag the top and bottom reference lines to the top of the pole wood and the bottom of the stick.
Choose Finalize, review the summary, then tap Finalize Pole Data. The pole changes from red to its complete color.
While on any measurement screen, the note icon in the header opens Notes for that specific task; use it to jot down anything worth remembering about this particular capture (for example, why you had to compromise on the base reference) without leaving the measurement flow. This is separate from the pole's own Notes field in the data-entry form.
If you cannot reach the base of the pole, the app has built-in options instead of improvising: Skip tilt (treats the pole as vertical, with reduced accuracy), base offset (shown as "Base obscured? Set base offset" - enter the distance from the ground to the lowest point you can see), and Two known points (set two points whose heights you know). Use these rather than guessing. A common case is a pole based off a bridge or retaining wall where the base sits well below you and cannot be reached: pick the option that fits and set your reference from the lowest point you can actually see.
Place and classify attachment heights (HOA)
After the scaled photo, you record the heights of what is on the pole. This is the "height of attachments" (HOA) work, and it is what the back office annotation builds on.
Tap + Attachment at the bottom of the screen to drop a marker, then drag it into position on the line (press and hold a marker to lock it).
Classify each marker against your configuration's pick list. Attachments are grouped into tabs labeled Attachment, Wire, and Guy.
For a Wire or Guy attachment, you may also be asked to pick which span or guy anchor it belongs to, shown as a compass-style diagram. Get this right, especially on a pole with more than one down-guy or crossing span; a wire or guy tied to the wrong one is a data error the office may not catch.
If your configuration enables it, use AI attachment detection (the magic-wand). It proposes markers with a confidence slider and runs on the phone, so once it is set up it works with no signal. It downloads its model once over the network on first use, so run it while you have connectivity before heading somewhere with no coverage. Treat it as a starting point and confirm every suggestion.
Set Height Manually when an attachment is out of reach or obscured (for example from a measuring stick or rangefinder). This option appears in Standard accuracy mode only (in high-accuracy stick captures the photo-derived height is authoritative), and it is hidden while a marker is locked. A manually set height overrides the photo-derived value for that one attachment. Note in the field when a height was hand-entered so office QA knows it is an estimate, not a measurement.
Set an attachment heading when your configuration collects direction (for transformers, antennas, lights, cameras, and guy attachment points). The compass dial rotates as you turn so its north marker always points at true north, like a real compass.
Custom attachment names: if the pick list is missing a type, you can create a custom name. A gotcha: a saved custom name lives only on your device and does not sync to other phones. For org-wide consistency, ask your administrator to add the type to the configuration (see Configuration).
Fixing a capture
There are two ways to change a finalized measurement:
Edit HOA reopens the existing photo so you can adjust or reclassify attachment markers without taking a new photo. Try this first.
Re-measure Pole starts over and discards the photo and its data (it prompts you to confirm before overwriting). Only use it when the photo itself is unusable.