Construction Viz

Project Management Perfect

Forms

Customized Questionnaires Now Available in All Construction Viz Apps

Forms |

Whether you are completing a site inspection, daily report, or even a risk assessment, you may need to create customized questionnaires where you can add unique questions and choose the types of responses, like a date or checkbox. With our latest release of Construction Viz, we aimed to deliver a truly dynamic questionnaire solution that is available across all our apps. Check out this article to find out more.

The new questionnaire component delivers robust and dynamic features on all fronts, and as with all Construction Viz applications, the data is stored on your SharePoint sites.

Questionnaires Available in All Construction Viz Apps

The questionnaire component is available across all Construction Viz apps. It is available in the daily and inspection form apps by default, but you can activate it on any of our apps.

Need questionnaires in a Change Request or Submittal form app? No problem. Activate the questionnaire feature in the settings.

Construction Questionnaire

Construction Viz Questionnaire Component Features

Custom response data types

Want different response data types for each question? When creating a questionnaire template, an admin can assign each question a unique response type, such as a checkbox, currency, date, date/time, instruction, location, number, percent, and text.

Construction Questionnaire

User enabled questionnaires

You might have a set of questions that require responses in a form by default, but you might also need the flexibility to respond to questions depending on the unique circumstance or condition.

The new user-enabled questionnaires allow the initiator to enable other related questions depending on the situation, providing the ultimate flexibility.

Form type questionnaires

We added a new form type field to select forms that can drive which questionnaires are enabled in the form. So, when a user selects a safety inspection form type in an inspection report form app, the safety questionnaires are made available by default.

Construction Questionnaire

These new questionnaire features in Construction Viz provide the ability to adapt to dynamic business needs and increase overall efficiency on construction projects.

Lydon Solutions continues to innovate and deliver solutions to real-world problems with Construction Viz. You can request a demo of Construction Viz for Microsoft 365 below.

Construction Viz PDF Report Wizard 2.0

Construction Viz, Forms, Reporting |

Printing off a construction form such as an RFI and easily including all of the attachments is a great feature of any construction management system. With the latest update to Construction Viz, find out how we take our PDF Report Wizard feature a step further.

Construction Viz includes a PDF Report Wizard feature where users can generate a PDF binder from a form while providing the ability to add its attachments. The easy-to-follow wizard walks the user through selecting which attachments to include, the order in which they print, and providing a name for the generated PDF binder. Construction Viz automatically converts the form and any Microsoft Office attachments and images to PDF and then merges them into a PDF binder upon execution.

The Construction Viz PDF Report Wizard feature is excellent for printing one or more forms and then emailing them off to a contractor or archiving project documents.

What’s New in Construction Viz PDF Report Wizard 2.0

Construction Viz - PDF Report Wizard 2.0 -screenshot 1

In our latest update, we added a new report builder to the settings so you can create custom form reports and set default reports for your instance of Construction Viz. The new form report setting includes the ability to:

  • Create one or more reports for each form app and profile with a custom name.
  • Select which form components to include in a report.
  • Select whether to print components that contain no data.
  • Set a report as the default so it is automatically selected when you click print.
Construction Viz - PDF Report Wizard 2.0 - screenshot 2

While Construction Viz utilizes reporting via Power BI for the heavy lifting, the PDF Report Wizard is a simple tool to generate form-specific reports and attachments quickly. This new feature was a requested enhancement that provides even more flexibility to system users.

If you are looking to utilize Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online to manage your projects, check out Construction Viz for an enterprise-scale solution that allows you to get the most out of your investment in Microsoft 365. You can request a demo here. If you need help doing more with Microsoft 365, you can request a free one-hour consultation.

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How Do You Capture Meeting Minutes in Microsoft 365?

Forms |

Construction Viz Meeting Minutes App

One of the most basic needs of a construction project is an effective way to document meeting minutes and their associated action items. For those using Microsoft 365, you've probably experimented with several options, from simple Word documents to building Power Apps. With the Construction Viz Meeting Minutes form app, we did all of the heavy lifting so you could hit the ground running. Check out this article to find out more.

When you think about what makes up a solid meeting minutes tool, you need a way to capture attendees, agenda topics, and action items. Also, the tool needs the ability to print, search, and send minutes to team members. In Microsoft 365, to deliver a meeting minutes solution, you will need to string together several applications to meet these minimum requirements. With Construction Viz, we have considered all these areas and more with our Meeting Minutes app, and if that's the only app you need, that's the only app you pay for!

The Meeting Minutes form is one of over forty form apps available in Construction Viz, but it's also one of those must-have apps to add to your toolbox.

Key Components of the Meeting Minutes App

Construction Viz apps are comprised of targeted code widgets called components that perform a specific function, can be turned on or off, and allow customization as needed. The Meeting Minutes app includes the following components out of the box:

  • Meeting Logistics. Capture the start day/time and location of the meeting.
  • Attendees. Include all users and non-users in attendance.
  • Agenda and Minutes. Create as many agenda items as needed, including minutes associated with the agenda item.
  • Document Attachments. Upload as many files as needed and capture metadata to organize your files.
  • Link Attachments. Add links to internal or external locations.
  • Include as many reviewers as needed to ensure the forms are complete and ready to be distributed.
  • Send off emails to groups and users with links to the form.

Embedded Apps

  • Action Items can be created while in a meeting minutes form and are automatically linked to the Action Item app so you never lose track of where the action item was assigned.
  • Ability to automatically carry open action items into subsequent meetings. Avoid having to re-type the action items in every meeting by including them from the menu when duplicating a form.

Reporting

  • Print to PDF one or many forms. It also includes an option to include document attachments automatically converted to PDF from Office files.
  • Dashboards display by form status with drill-downs to filtered views.
  • Ability to insert Power BI reports. You can add your own dashboards to Construction Viz by copying and pasting a Power BI report URL into the Dashboard settings.

Workflow

  • Add one or more reviewers on the fly so they can receive emails and notifications.
  • Automatically email reviewers. Upon add, email can be sent off to reviewers automatically.
  • Add Power Automate workflows. You can add your own Power Automate workflows to the app settings.

Other

  • Duplicate forms so you can reuse form templates, minimizing data entry.
  • Saved views to create project and personal views.
  • Document attachment view so you can find attached files independent of the meeting minutes.
  • File flyout menu so you can update attached document metadata (Title, revision, date, etc.) in an easy-to-use form.
  • My Action Required Toggle so you can filter any forms in your queue that need your attention.
  • Notifications Center indicates meeting minutes and action items in your cue.
  • Project-specific form numbering is available if more than one project is managed in the deployment of Construction Viz.
  • Export any app grids to Excel.
  • Permission controls by contractor already integrated into the app.
  • Availability to add Construction Viz to a Microsoft Team.
  • Data is stored in client Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online, so it's securely available 24x7

Whew. That's an exhaustive list, and I’m sure I left off a bunch of features, but you get the picture😊.

While there are many considerations for rolling your own meeting minutes tool in Microsoft 365, there is no right or wrong. It always comes down to time and money. Would you want to spend your time building the solution or leveraging one that is ready-made but can still be customized? Either way, Lydon Solutions is here to help. You can request a free one-hour consultation here or a demo of the Construction Viz meeting minutes app below.

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View Your Data Your Way with Construction Viz Saved Views 

Forms |

Construction projects generate a ton of data that must be tracked and analyzed in real-time. With our latest update to Construction Viz, we wanted to make our form app data views even more powerful by adding the ability to create, edit, and save personal and project views for the entire team to use. Read on to discover how this new feature will allow you to analyze and report on your data quickly and easily.

Construction Viz already includes configurable data views across all our apps. Users can group, sort, filter, reorganize, and search on form columns to get to meaningful data quickly. However, we wanted to provide more capabilities to allow users to create and save their personal and project data views. Since Construction Viz stores your data in your Microsoft SharePoint lists and libraries, we took inspiration from the view configuration options in SharePoint but further enhanced its capabilities for construction management.

New Construction Viz Saved Views UI

We had to make a few changes to our user interface to deliver the new saved views feature in Construction Viz. While maintaining most of our core structure, we re-designed the layouts to align with our Task Manager app for the ultimate flexibility when visualizing data in different configurations.

New Construction Viz Saved Views UI

Now, we can display different data configurations in grouped tabs, such as dashboards, lists, attachments, Gantts, geospatial maps, and calendars. The new tab structure lets users quickly move between different data configurations while keeping the filtering persistent.

We've also added an app-specific settings cog for saved views and future setting enhancements. Users can now create, edit, and save data views from within the app-specific settings or the data view selector.

Construction Viz App-specific settings

In a future post, we will provide more insights into the benefits of this latest re-design. Exciting features to come 😊

Key Features of Construction Viz Saved Views

We packed many features in this latest Saved Views release, but some of the key highlights include the following:

  • Project vs. Personal Views. Quickly find the forms you seek by creating project views for all users or personal views for your own use.
  • Default views. Save time by assigning a default view to display when navigating to any app.
  • My Action Required. Quickly filter tasks assigned to you by clicking the "My Action Required" toggle.
  • Show All Revisions. By default, Construction Viz displays the latest revisions in form data views, but with this update, users can quickly toggle to see all form and related document revisions. This is a great feature for viewing the history of all forms and their attachments and exporting all records.
  • Available in form apps. The new UI and saved views feature are available in all form apps, such as RFIs, Submittals, or Daily Reports.

Construction Viz is a full-featured and enterprise-ready project management information system (PMIS) for Microsoft 365. To learn more about Construction Viz features and apps, check out our weekly blogs. You can request a demo of Construction Viz here. Also, if you need any Microsoft 365 support or have any suggestions for future blogs, you can submit a consultation request here. 

Linked apps, where have you been?

Forms |

The new linked apps feature in Construction Viz allows creating any form within another form, like an action item within a meeting minute form or a change request in a risk form. Find out how this new feature can save time and improve your overall document control processes.

A need based on common real-world scenarios

If you think about the evolution of a change on a project, it might start with an issue, move to risk, get added to an RFI, and finally move to a change request to implement the change. Typically, these are all separate forms, but they are all part of an interrelated process to document and disposition a project change.

Taking a step back and looking at the entire change process, each form builds on the prior, from inception to implementation. Additional details, further justification, subsequent approvals, etc., are added at each stage of the change lifecycle.

If you can relate these separate processes together, project teams can streamline the process and build an audit trail to support the justification of the change.

Enter Construction Viz’s linked apps

With the new Construction Viz connected apps feature, you can create one or more form apps within another. For example, if you are filling out a risk form and want to generate a related change request, you can add the change request form linked component to the risk form settings.

When a user completes a risk form, the new component will show a window into the change request app where they can create one or more change requests without ever leaving the risk form. And the change request will automatically link back to the risk form and vice versa.

This functionality can be added to any form, creating a one-to-many relationship so that an entire process can be automatically related.

Linked apps are just one of the many features we have added to Construction Viz to enhance information management on a project further. You can request a demo of Construction here.

Not ready to move to an enterprise construction management system or need help with Microsoft 365? You can request a free 1-hour Microsoft 365 consultation request with our experts here.

Construction Viz for Microsoft 365 Product Demo
Webinar - September 7, 2023, 11:00 AM PST
Participate in this interactive session to share your challenges and learn more about Construction Viz for Microsoft 365.
Learn More

Improve Project Efficiency with New Schedule Views for Construction Viz

Forms |

Construction forms such as submittals, RFIs, and daily reports are tightly integrated with project schedules but can get lost among the hundreds or thousands of potential activities. To manage forms effectively, it’s not enough to just see them included in a weekly schedule report. It is essential to evaluate inquiries promptly and efficiently in real-time to address any possible schedule disruptions.

These inquiries may include the following:

  • Did the contractor adhere to the contractual obligations by submitting their documents on time?
  • Was the review of Requests for Information (RFIs) conducted within the agreed-upon deadlines?
  • Were the daily inspections conducted as scheduled?

You need a simple and quick way to answer these questions and more in your construction project management software solution. The problem is that the typical form logs found in most PMISs allow you to sort and filter on due dates, but it lacks form-specific Gantt chart views to manage deliverables.

Our new form view feature for Construction Viz solves this shortcoming.

Construction Viz gives you a clear view of your form data

With the new Construction Viz schedule views, you can visualize any of our apps in a traditional Gantt chart view accessible from within the app itself. Now, you have the best of both worlds, the detailed analysis of form data in interactive logs and a Gantt chart focused specifically on the form.

Construction Viz System Outage Request app All Items List (“Form Log”) View
Construction Viz System Outage Request app with new schedule view

Construction Viz Scheduler view sample

Customizable form-specific schedules

You can further tailor Construction Viz’s new schedule views for a specific form. For example, baseline vs. the current schedule, resources assignment, and critical path could be added to the submittal form app while not adding those features to the daily report app. And you can roll up schedule data captured in each form app into an overall master schedule.

The new schedule view keeps team leads and members focused on meeting their specific deliverable dates using an intuitive and interactive Gantt chart.

Find out more about Construction Viz features and apps for Microsoft 365 here.