Construction Viz

Project Management Perfect

Microsoft 365

How Can I Manage Project Emails?

Project Management |

Many companies find managing project emails cumbersome in their existing Project Management Information System (PMIS) and prefer to use Microsoft Outlook for project correspondence. So, how can we accommodate this using Microsoft 365 and Construction Viz? Check out this article to find out more.

One of the questions we hear from construction organizations is: How can they use Microsoft 365 and/or Construction Viz to manage project emails? The process needs to be easy, and they need to have the ability to do this right from Outlook.

Easy Project Email Management with Construction Viz

With Construction Viz, you are in luck. Construction Viz uses Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online to store data so that we can leverage some out-of-the-box functionality to our advantage. Here are a few approaches:

  1. SharePoint sites have email addresses. With a SharePoint Team site, you can use a group email address as the project email to send and receive emails. With Construction Viz, we can ensure any system-generated emails automatically copy that unique email address. We can also send those emails to a SharePoint libraries and surface them in the File Manager app.
  2. Libraries and Folders for Project Emails. The Construction Viz File Manager app allows you to create one or more SharePoint document libraries and folders to manage project information. So, if you need to store emails from multiple projects, you can create separate document libraries and folders as needed. Once created, you can drag and drop emails from Outlook into the upload screen of the File Manager or any other Construction Viz app. You can then view those emails, send links to the emails to team members, and even include links to those emails in other applications.
  1. Upload to OneDrive, Teams, or SharePoint. Outlook emails can be dragged and dropped to OneDrive, Teams, or SharePoint. Since all of these applications are connected, the File Manager app can access the messages and display those emails in Construction Viz.

Construction Viz is a one-of-a-kind construction project management solution for Microsoft 365. You can use it out of the box, integrated with other Microsoft 365 apps, and/or customized to your unique needs. You can request a demo here to find out more.

Old School Meet the New School: Construction Viz File Manager

Project Management Tools |

There are two camps for how to store project files in a project management information system (PMIS): use folders or tag files with metadata. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. With the new Construction Viz File Manager, you can choose either method or both for your projects. Read on to find out how the Construction Viz File Manager can help you manage your project documentation how you want.

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Like the cola wars between Pepsi vs. Coke, storing project files in folders or tagging files with metadata has proponents firmly dug in on both sides of the argument. Knowing that these two camps are resistant to change is why Microsoft offers multiple applications like OneDrive and SharePoint, which store files differently (but they are becoming more similar with each new release).

The case for storing your files in folders

The old-school approach to managing files has always followed the same approach as Windows Explorer, where you drag and drop files into named folders.

A folder-based approach makes storing files simple, but finding them when needed can be challenging depending on the folder hierarchy. You can use search in some instances to find your files by reading the data within them. However, you must often understand the folder structure to find your desired file.

Microsoft 365 OneDrive home screen with folders.

The case for organizing your files with metadata

If you tag files with metadata, you can search, filter, and report on those tags, but it does force some up-front work. The person uploading the file must tag data (depending on how you set up the drop-off workflow) to the file in order to effectively search for the file later. So, while metadata tagging is excellent for document control, it can frustrate users on the front end.

SharePoint Document Library with metadata columns Project and Location.

With Construction Viz, we have been a metadata tagging proponent. The more metadata you collect, the more reporting and analysis you can do. So, we structured the system around metadata collected via our form technology. If users preferred to use folders, we would link to SharePoint libraries or OneDrive since we stored data in SharePoint. But with our File Manager app, things are about to change.

How can I use both metadata and folders?

The new Construction Viz File Manager provides the folder management file storage that users love without leaving the Construction Viz hub. Users can build out a custom folder structure similar to OneDrive or Windows Explorer and can link files into forms within Construction Viz.

The File Manager seamlessly integrates SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams files. 

The File Manager boasts the following capabilities:

  • Select any document library in your SharePoint site to create folders or upload documents without having to navigate to SharePoint.
  • Select the default documents library in SharePoint to have files synced across Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint automatically.
  • Upload files using our standard document attachment uploader that checks file names and allows editing files on the fly.
  • Link files stored in the File Manager to other Construction Viz applications, such as RFIs, submittals, and daily reports.

With the Construction Viz and the new File Manager app you get the best of both worlds of both folders and metadata. You can store files in folders like Windows Explorer or tag them with metadata automatically when adding them as attachments to our forms.

Video overview of the Construction Viz File Manager app

We continue to focus on delivering solutions that meet you where you work and how you work. The File Manager is one of many applications we have implemented that allow you to make the most out of Microsoft 365 to manage your construction projects. You can find out more about Construction Viz here or request a free one-hour consultation with our Microsoft 365 professionals.

Introducing the New Construction Viz Specification App

Specification Management |

The Construction Viz Specification app complements the Drawing app by providing a one-stop shop for storing and organizing contract requirements, managing revisions, and integrating specifications across our suite of Construction Viz form applications. If specification management is a focus area for your projects, read on to learn more about this exciting new tool.

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Key Features of the Construction Viz Specification App

Find the correct specification. Managing construction projects involves strict adherence to the contract drawings and specifications. Team members need to be able to quickly find the latest specifications and reference them in project correspondence. With the Specification app, we added a comprehensive set of metadata fields such as division, set, spec number, and release date to find what you are looking for easily.

Work off the latest revision. Revision management is a common issue in projects. We added our robust revision management functionality, allowing users always to see the latest revisions by default in the logs but can easily toggle to see all revisions.

Manage one set of specifications. More than one set of specifications can float around on projects, especially if uploaded to correspondence forms. To ensure a single source of truth for specifications, we built the Related Specifications Component that can be added to any form. With the Related Specifications Component, users can filter, assign, and download specifications within any form. This feature saves one set of specifications that can be easily referenced anywhere throughout the project.

View specifications your way. We know you want to search for specifications based on your specific criteria, so we included our saved views feature in the Construction Viz Specifications app. This feature enables you to create one or more views to help you quickly find what you need and have that view default every time you visit the specifications. You can read more about the saved views feature in this blog post.

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Lydon Solutions continues to build features and functionality to make construction management easier using the tools that everyone is familiar with, Microsoft 365. If you are looking for a turnkey construction management solution that can be further customized to your specific needs and deployed to your Microsoft 365 tenant, click this link to request a demo.

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. 

Break Through the 5K Record Limit in SharePoint Online with Construction Viz 

Project Management |

SharePoint Online lists and document libraries have a 5,000-item limit for filtering data. You could quickly reach that threshold if you want to use a single SharePoint site to house many projects or a large multi-year project.

Read on to discover how Construction Viz can overcome the 5K threshold, continue delivering robust analytics for your projects, and keep ticking regardless of the threshold limit.

SharePoint lists and libraries can store up to 30 million records. At 5,000 records, however, filtering views stop working. And with SharePoint Online, there is no way to change that threshold.

You could re-index the list or library, adding one or more indexes to the list columns, which will fix the error message. However, exceeding the threshold will still adversely impact SharePoint’s functionality. Specifically, column filtering is limited, and lookups can be adversely affected. Removing columns from views can help, but ultimately, you will have a different experience after you hit the threshold.

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Construction Viz Solves the 5K Item Limit in SharePoint Online

Since organizations may need to manage one or many projects in a single SharePoint site, with Construction Viz for Microsoft 365, we built controls to keep your projects running smoothly regardless of the threshold. So, even if you have not implemented indexing on the SharePoint list or library, Construction Viz can continue delivering analytics and reporting.

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With Construction Viz, we take the best of Microsoft 365, fill in any gaps, and deliver a second-to-none project management information system in your Microsoft environment.

Click here for a free demo and consultation to learn how Construction Viz can save you time and money while keeping your data safe in your Microsoft 365.

Construction Viz Task Manager 2.0 – Gantt Charts Coming to Task Management

Project Management, Project Management Tools, Scheduling |

The Construction Viz Task Manager app for Microsoft 365 delivers a simple yet powerful way to track and report on project tasks. It is a stand-alone application in Construction Viz but can be integrated into any other application, such as RFIs, Submittals, or Meeting Minutes. With the latest update, we’ve moved the needle significantly on project task management to include scheduling, checklists, and sub-tasks!

Read on to find out more about how our updated Task Manager app can help you organize and track tasks for your projects.

What is New in Construction Viz Task Manager 2.0

We built the Task Manager so that team members have a 360-degree view of project tasks. The Task Manager includes the following views:

  • Dashboard – Displays charts of key metrics with drill-down capability.
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  • List – Provides a log of all tasks with filtering, grouping, and search.
  • Board – Displays a Kanban view for updating the status of tasks.
  • Calendar – Plots tasks on a familiar calendar with today, day, week, month, and agenda views.

With the latest Task Manager release, we are extending the functionality to include lightweight scheduling. So, if you are looking for a three-week look ahead project schedule tool or prefer a Gantt chart-style view of your tasks, we’ve got you covered.

This release includes the following updates to the Task Manager app:

  • Schedule View – A new view that displays all tasks in a familiar Gantt chart schedule. The schedule includes scheduling controls to filter and change displays.
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  • Task Schedule component – We added a scheduling component to the task form for managing start and finish dates, times, all-day events, and durations.
  • Task Checklist component – We added a checklist component to the task form to track items needed to complete the overall task. The checklist allows for drag-and-drop ordering, auto-assign completed by, and completed dates.
  • Sub-task component – We added a component to the task form to add sub-tasks to a task. Sub-tasks include fields for the required by date, forecasted completion date, status, and percent complete.
  • Visual alerts – We updated the mouse-over tooltips and added color indicators across views to display late and incomplete tasks. These visual alerts will help project teams stay on track.
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While these updates are significant, we are just getting started. We plan on further extending the scheduling capabilities of the Construction Viz Task Manager app, including dependencies and resource management. Stay tuned as we continue to deliver a leading-edge task management solution with Construction Viz for Microsoft 365!

Sign up today for a no-obligation demo to learn how Construction Viz can help your organization manage your construction projects more efficiently.