Construction Viz

Project Management Perfect

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Why Access Management Matters For Your Projects

Collaboration |

Construction projects involve many different stakeholders that create, edit, and review project information, making it challenging to ensure sensitive data doesn't end up in the wrong hands. Thus, using a robust Project Management Information System (PMIS) with the right access management tools is essential.

For companies utilizing Microsoft 365 or SharePoint as a PMIS, you are probably aware of these tools' powerful access level capabilities out of the box. While you can assign granular permissions at a site, library, folder, and even a specific file level, you can very quickly create a spiderweb of complexity that can be too unwieldy to manage. Construction Viz, our construction project management solution powered by Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, lets you take full control of access management for your projects.

Leveraging SharePoint Access Management with Construction Viz


For over 11 years, Lydon Solutions has been building SharePoint-based construction management solutions, including our very own PMIS, Construction Viz. One of the thorniest issues organizations encounter using SharePoint to manage construction projects is access management. This is why our goal when we built Construction Viz was to leverage SharePoint's underlying access controls while providing a simplified user interface for easier permissions administration.

What makes the Construction Viz Access Management layer so great?


Construction-centric. With years of experience building custom solutions in SharePoint and providing document control services, we know how teams typically share and control project information. We designed Construction Viz Access Management around groups, users, apps, and specific content related to contractors and companies. For example, a project team could give certain users access to the Submittal app but only allow them to see and edit submittals from their company or for a specific project.

Simplified Management. Access Management is centralized in the Construction Viz Hub to simplify access administration. As you activate Construction Viz apps within the Hub, they are automatically added to the access management module, allowing administrators to grant users access right away. You can manage access in two ways:

  1. From Groups Management, an administrator can create access groups, assigning each different access rights - such as read, write, or none - on a per contractor, company, or app basis. From Users Management, an administrator can then assign individual users to a specific access group, thus automatically assigning the user the same rights defined under Groups Management.
  2. If the administrator needs to set special access rules for a user, they can give a user custom access rather than adding them to a specific access group.

You can display all groups or users' access levels in an interactive grid from either Groups Management or Access Management views. This data can then be exported to Excel and printed as a PDF for further analysis and reporting.

Powerful Customization. Construction Viz Access Management provides consistent access control across all apps in the suite. You can define access down to the component level (such as form header, attachments, links, reviews, and so) and even to the field level (such as initiator, status, and description) depending on your needs. For example, you could set up your RFI forms with access controls that only allow the contractor who submitted the form to edit the description field. In this same form, the general contractor reviewing this information might only have access to the response fields in their assigned review section. Similarly, the owner could have access to just their response fields in their review section.

With Construction Viz Access Management, we built in the capabilities for managing stakeholder access for construction projects of any size in a way that minimizes the level of effort required to administer.

Learn More About Construction Viz Access Management


Access Management is a feature we built into our apps to ensure access to project data can be managed easily across our suite of apps. Find out other ways that Construction Viz can help your projects be successful by contacting us for a free consultation and demo. If you need help getting your construction projects up and running quickly, Lydon Solutions also offers managed services for Microsoft 365 and SharePoint.

Simpler Project Management with the Construction Viz Project Tracker App

Project Tracker |

When planning a construction project and seeing it through to closeout, it’s essential that you use the right tools to keep the entire project team on track. We created the Construction Viz Project Tracker app to assist with this process.

The Construction Viz Project Tracking app, available for Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, combines all of your critical project information into a single interactive dashboard for easy reporting, resolving issues, and monitoring the schedule and budget.

The benefits of using Project Tracker

Keep track of everything you need to know about your projects with the Project Tracker app. You can use Project Tracker to:

1. Keep track of 1000s of projects with ease. The Project Tracker app allows you to manage tasks for one or several customers associated with a project. Roll up tasks from multiple customers into one easy-to-read dashboard to see everything at a glance.
2. Manage permits to issuance. Identify permitting requirements and work on hundreds of permits to keep your team on track.
3. Prepare the Job Package Binder. With a click of a button, the Project Tracker can prepare the job package binder for your construction foreman to take on the job site.
4. Be productive anywhere with full mobile and offline support. Use our lineup of Construction Viz offline mobile forms, such as The Daily Inspection Report, to track programs and projects from a mobile device.
5. Always know where your projects are happening with GIS integration. View your projects spatially. Load in GIS layers to overlay on top of your projects.
6. Tag documents in seconds. Construction Viz makes document management for your project easy, letting you tag documents to one or many projects based on the dynamic that you define.
7. Integrate with Power Automate. The Project Tracker app integrates into Microsoft Power Automate to give you the option to send alerts or create workflows.

Check out our presentation about the Project Tracker app to learn more and see how one major California utility company uses the tool to manage complex maintenance projects involving over six thousand transmission towers.

Get started with Project Tracker and Construction Viz

The Project Tracker app is a part of the Construction Viz Suite, which offers more than thirty-one construction forms to assist with project management. Find out more about Construction Viz and see how we can help you better manage your projects by requesting a free demo today.

How Construction Viz Streamlines Email Approvals

Collaboration |

Construction Viz enables your team to get more done with the tools they already know and use most. In this post, we’ll share how stakeholders can view and respond to approval workflows directly within Microsoft Outlook – all without needing to sign into any other construction project management platform.

Your construction project team already spends a lot of their day working in Microsoft Excel, Word, and Outlook. One of our goals with Construction Viz is empowering project teams to keep using their Microsoft products instead of having to learn a new Project Management Information System (PMIS). Our recently introduced Construction Viz Cost Report app is an example of this philosophy in action. In our blog post introducing the new app, we explained how the tool enables cost engineers to use their preferred software, Excel, while automatically importing cost data into Microsoft SharePoint for viewing and reporting by other team members.

Read on to learn how Construction Viz can let you leverage Microsoft Outlook to collect input and approval from team members via email without requiring users to sign into anything else.

The Problems with Typical Approval Workflows

Before talking about what Construction Viz can do, let’s review how other platforms handle the approval workflow.

Most construction project management systems on the market send an email to designated users when an approval workflow is triggered. This email has some basic information captured from the workflow and a link to view the entire item being submitted for approval directly in the project management system. To proceed, the user needs to sign in to the software platform that generated the email.

The above process is probably familiar and may seem simple enough, but it includes multiple assumptions, including that the user receiving the email:

  1. Has an active account in the project system.
  2. Can sign in to the system from the device they are currently using.
  3. Remembers their password.
  4. Is trained and familiar with the system.
  5. Knows how to navigate the system to provide their response to the correct record.

As you can see, each of those assumptions puts the burden on the end-user. If any of those assumptions turn out to be incorrect, the approval process stops dead in its tracks.

With Construction Viz, we threw out all these assumptions and designed something better.

Construction Viz Simplifies Approval Workflow Emails

We have worked with and analyzed the workflows of numerous construction companies over the years. As a result, we’ve seen that most team members who review and approve records do not need to use the construction project management system for any other reason. So why make them log in every time they need to respond to an approval request?

Knowing the above, we designed Construction Viz to streamline the review and approval process. We built a workflow using Microsoft Power Automate to email approval requests to project team members, even if they don’t have a Construction Viz or Microsoft 365 account.

Microsoft Power Automate workflow example

The email generated by Construction Viz has all the necessary information and attachments required to approve the record, as well as a linked lightweight Microsoft Form that the recipient can use to respond to the request. There is no need for them to sign into Construction Viz or any other system. The approver can review and make updates directly in the included form, and Microsoft Power Automate automatically pushes those updates back to Construction Viz. For the recipient, it could not be simpler to respond to the request, no matter what device they are using.

Construction Viz email approval form

Taking Approvals to the Next Level

Construction Viz streamlines the approval workflow process and enables team members to do more with email, a tool they regularly use throughout the day.

But what if users are not even in Outlook at all? Could Construction Viz display approval request forms in any application, or even in the notification area of a user’s mobile device? We think that would be a great feature. Stay tuned for more details on what we have planned next to do just that.

Get Construction Viz for your Team

Construction Viz is a web-based construction project management solution that you can deploy into Microsoft 365 and SharePoint. There are many advantages to this deployment model, such as having your data stay with you in your Microsoft 365 tenant. Also, you can leverage the full power of Microsoft 365 application services with Construction Viz, all with the same Microsoft user credentials.

If you need help setting up your construction projects in Microsoft 365, visit LydonSolutions.com, where you can find out more on our Microsoft 365 Managed Services and submit a no-obligation consultation request. If you prefer a turnkey, enterprise-ready project management software solution, contact us today for a free demo.

Keep Organized with the Construction Viz Drawing Management App

Drawing Management |

Make sure your team always has access to the latest set of drawings for your projects with the Construction Viz Drawing Management app for Microsoft 365 and SharePoint.

A frequent challenge for construction project managers is finding and referencing the latest set of drawings. Part of the problem is that many organizations do not keep an updated master drawing list. Further complicating things, teams often store PDFs of the drawings for their projects without metadata in a shared drive with a complex folder structure. As a result, only employees that know the folder scheme can find and update drawing revisions correctly.

The impact of project teams not having timely access to the correct drawings can be felt from the home office to the field, resulting in lost productivity for the engineers and contractors doing the work. Effective drawing management is not just a problem for small companies. We have seen these kinds of issues happen even on multi-billion-dollar projects over the years.

With the new Construction Viz Drawing Management app, available for Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, we set out to reimagine how a system can help project teams manage construction drawings more effectively.

Six Key Features of the Construction Viz Drawing App


The Construction Viz Drawing Management app improves the entire drawing management process in six key areas:

1. Creating an interactive master drawing list. The Construction Viz Drawing app includes an interactive and searchable grid of every drawing organized by ID number, sheet, title, revision, discipline, area, and drawing set. The latest revisions are listed first, so team members are always working off the most recent revision. The grid can be filtered and grouped to find any drawing easily.

Construction Viz Drawing Management App - Master Drawing List

2. Organizing drawing file storage. No more complex folder structures. As with all Construction Viz data, the Drawing Management app stores each drawing and revision as a record with a single associated file in SharePoint for easy access.

3. Improving drawing revision management. When a user uploads new drawings, the app requires them to input a user-defined revision value. Since the app displays the latest revisions first, other team members can readily find and work off of the most recent version of a drawing.

Construction Viz Drawing Management App – Revision Management

4. Adding drawing metadata. The app requires users to complete standard metadata fields when uploading new drawings. This rich metadata lets teams filter, group, and search drawings in the app’s master grid view.

5. Relating drawings to other processes. The Drawing Management app integrates with other Construction Viz apps to add a “Related Drawings” component. The component enables users working in other apps to select one or more drawings and relate them to any record, such as an RFI or other form, using the same interactive and searchable grid featured in the Document Management app. This feature makes it quick and easy for users to include related drawings on construction forms and correspondence without having to deal with attachments.

Construction Viz Drawing Management App – Related Drawings component

6. Exporting drawing PDFs to local devices. Users can export drawing PDFs for use on their local devices from within the master drawing list grid or a related app using the component feature described above.

These six features of the Construction Viz Drawing Management app will save a project team the headache that comes with trying to update and find the latest drawing revisions. Integration with other Construction Viz apps ensures that users have ready access to the right drawings when and where they need them – and can share them with a few clicks.

See What Else Construction Viz Can Do for Your Organization

Construction Viz offers a full lineup of construction management apps, including tools for project tracking, scheduling, GIS maps, cost reports, construction forms, and more. Find out how Construction Viz can help you better manage your construction project by scheduling a no-obligation demo today.

Your Flows, Your PMIS: Power Automate & Construction Viz

Power Automate |

Power Automate is a Microsoft 365 service that automates time-consuming business tasks and processes. It makes it practical and simple for line-of-business users to build workflows across applications and services. Most PMIS systems on the market have their own proprietary workflow functionality, but what makes Microsoft’s Power Automate unique, is that it is a stand-alone service that can integrate with both Microsoft 365 as well as external applications.

Being that Construction Viz can be deployed into Microsoft 365, we deeply integrated Power Automate into our application so you can build, deploy, and support your flows from within the Construction Viz hub directly inside your Microsoft 365 tenant. With Microsoft’s free, on-premises data gateway, you can also connect Power Automate flows (as well as other Power Platform services) to line-of-business systems behind your corporate firewall. In fact, we have leveraged the Gateway to connect client’s Microsoft 365 environments to our hosted Construction Viz service offering which opens up a wide array of possibilities.

Power Automate

We make it easier than ever to add your own manual triggers and configurable buttons that allow users to link their flows and add it to any app.

So, What Could You do with Power Automate and Construction Viz?

Send out Construction Viz Action Items for review that will update one or more Microsoft 365 applications at one time from a single workflow. This is triggered by using a button you can add to the Action Item form. So not only will the alert notification display as an action item in a user’s ball-in-court, but it can also update:

• Microsoft To Do – as a task
• Outlook – as an email approval request, a task or event
• Planner – as an event
• Teams – as a post
• Excel – as an action item in a Worksheet

Why is this important? Because every company or employee might manage their work in different Microsoft 365 applications. For some users, it’s Excel. For others, it might be Outlook, and so on. With Power Automate, you can configure the workflow around how you work and what applications in Microsoft 365 you use frequently.

Other Power Automate workflows can include:

• Creating PDFs from Construction Viz forms as well as attachments
• Extracting data from Excel to use in Construction Viz apps
• Emailing alerts from Power BI dashboards embedded in Construction Viz

To get you started, we have built a set of Power Automate workflows that work with Construction Viz and can be imported into your Microsoft 365 tenant. Once imported, you can modify as needed to create the solution that works best for your organization.

Get Started with Power Automate

Get the most out of Microsoft 365 by combining Construction Viz with Power Automate to create unparalleled solutions.

To find out more, schedule a free demo of Construction Viz. If you need help with Microsoft 365 setup for your construction organization, check out our managed services at Lydon Solutions.

Cost Engineers Rejoice – You Can Keep Using Excel for Cost Management

Forms |

One thing has never changed in my 20+ years in project controls: cost engineers want to manage cost in Excel. It doesn’t matter to them how many fancy enterprise cost management systems there are on the market. Excel is like that special blanket from childhood – it is familiar, dependable, and nothing else can replace it. We get it, which is why we have designed the Construction Viz Cost Report app to integrate deeply with Excel for cost management.

I can understand why, if you are a cost engineer, you prefer to stick with Excel. Your spreadsheet is yours and yours alone. It has your very own custom columns to check formulas, worksheets for data dumps, macros for updates and reporting, comments on variances, and so on. Most importantly, you can use it to generate a cost report the way you want. And so, at the end of the month, you’ll take all that data from your Excel file and re-enter it into that enterprise cost management system your organization mandates to satisfy the corporate reporting requirement. You’ll do this even though it is a time-consuming process and riddled with the potential for clerical errors.

With Construction Viz, we set about creating a better solution that lets cost engineers stick with what they know while ensuring that managers have the dashboards and reports they need.

Designing the Ideal Cost Management Workflow with Construction Viz

When we started designing the cost management application for Construction Viz, we knew we needed to meet cost engineers where they prefer to work, and this is in Excel.

At the same time, we also needed a way for management to have real-time visibility to cost data across all projects, meaning that critical data could not stay locked away in Excel until someone re-entered it in a shared system.

So, we set about designing a solution that allows cost engineers to work in Excel while automating the flow of data to the Construction Viz portal for viewing and reporting.

Construction Viz Cost Report App and Excel

Based on the above, we created the Construction Viz Cost Report app. With our new app, the workflow is:

  1. A cost engineer saves their Excel cost report into a SharePoint document library where they can continue making regular updates.
  2. The Cost Report app, using the magic of a Power Automate workflow, then automatically grabs the critical data from the Excel file and makes the cost information available via an updated SharePoint list for all stakeholders to see.
  3. Next, we designed the Cost Report app to talk to the SharePoint List to provide analysis across projects and programs in a web-based and easy-to-use UI.
  4. Finally, the Cost Report app leverages Power BI to access the SharePoint List data, enabling robust dashboard views and reporting as needed.

The Construction Viz Cost Report app gives each team member what they want. Cost engineers get to keep working in Excel with their familiar spreadsheet tools. Management gets real-time access to cost data for reporting.

Introducing the Construction Viz Cost Report app

Advantages of the Construction Viz Cost Report App

The Construction Viz Cost Report app provides the following advantages over a traditional enterprise cost management system:

  • Excel as the foundation. Cost engineers can keep using their own Excel cost report as the data source.
  • Automated workflow. The workflow launches with a click and runs automatically.
  • Support for multiple spreadsheets. The app can pull data from multiple spreadsheets.
  • Efficiency and accuracy. No more redundant and error-prone manual data entry into two systems.
  • Real-time reporting and dashboards. The Cost Report app provides management with up-to-date cost information for easy analysis and reporting across projects and programs.
  • SharePoint & Microsoft 365 under the hood. Because Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft 365 power the Cost Report and other Construction Viz apps we offer, your organizations can be confident that you are using best-in-class technologies built on industry-leading enterprise software platforms.

Read more about the robust capabilities of our Cost Report app.

Learn More About Construction Viz

Contact us for a free consultation about how Construction Viz, integrated with Microsoft 365, can help you manage your construction projects.

Need help with Microsoft 365? Learn about Lydon Solution's full lineup of Microsoft 365 Managed Services.