Construction Viz

Project Management Perfect

Microsoft 365

Construction Viz Then, Now, and Tomorrow

News |

I was cleaning up my office over the weekend and found an article in ENR that I wrote back in 2017 announcing Construction Viz to the world. Little did I know what the future would hold. If you ever have a dream, think the challenge is too hard, and want to give up, I hope this article helps inspire you.

Rewind to 2017 and the launch of Construction Viz

“The only time you should look back in life, is to see how far you have come.”
— Kevin Hart

Until 2017, when I wrote this advertisement article for ENR, we had been strictly developing and hosting SharePoint-based solutions for the construction industry. With Construction Viz, our goal was to create a flexible app-driven platform that we could host or deploy into a client’s SharePoint. We wanted to use the latest and greatest technology and speed up the development and implementation times.

We knew SharePoint, but this was new ground.

In the first iterations of Construction Viz, we built custom JavaScript and Angular components connected to SharePoint lists and libraries. At the time, we had to deploy client-side code into SharePoint sites for the functionality to work.

Going out of the gate was a little rough since we were developing a completely new system while still managing our existing SharePoint clients. We didn’t know where this whole thing would go, but we knew we needed to move away from custom SharePoint development and hosting and into more of a product for Microsoft 365. In 2017, Microsoft 365 started picking up steam with Teams and the Power Platform. We knew Microsoft 365 would be the future, and we needed to change our approach.

Fast forward five years

“Don’t look back unless you can smile; don’t look ahead unless you can dream.”
— Irish Saying

While we had many ups and downs over the years, we stuck it out with Construction Viz for Microsoft 365, which has paid off! We have deployed Construction Viz for our clients on muti billion-dollar programs across many construction sectors.

So, how did we get here?

LookingBackCV_2

Bet on our people

Everyone on our team brings a unique skillset from technical architecture, UI/UX, front-end and back-end developers, and product managers. Everyone played a significant role in the direction of the product. The key was to listen to everyone and let the best idea win. The teams managed themselves; they took ownership of the product and were vested in its success.

Stayed nimble

There have been many challenges along the way that make you want to throw your hands up, like when Microsoft restricted deploying code into Microsoft 365. It literally stopped us in our tracks. We had to completely change our deployment model and fast. Construction Viz’s code now runs in the cloud in Lydon Solutions’ Azure data center while the lists and libraries are deployed into SharePoint. It seemed like a curse at the time, but now, the entire solution can be deployed into a client’s Microsoft 365 or SharePoint on-premises or hosted in our Azure environment.

Allowed for continuous improvement

We continually leverage the latest and greatest technology to compete with the larger companies still stuck on ten-year-old technology. We switched our client-side code to React JS, which has provided many needed benefits and made the entire solution a progressive web app (PWA) so a user on any device with a modern browser can access Construction Viz online or offline. We also created a portal to manage projects and programs across a portfolio.

Focused on time to market

Our clients want products quickly, so we needed to remove as many barriers as possible. We needed to scale the solution so deployments could happen the same day. We built a deployment model that could run with a single line of code and include diagnostics to ensure successful implementations.

Offered an attractive price model

Other vendors charge exorbitant prices for project management information systems (PMIS), which were still on old technology and resisted any product changes. We changed our pricing to a per-user/month model based on the applications selected so that clients weren’t paying for a bloated system where they might only use 5%.

The Future of Construction Viz

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards.”
— Steve Jobs

Having an IT company that provides services and products means that you have to be ready to adjust to market conditions. Today, clients want solutions now and don’t want to wait.

Our roadmap for Construction Viz includes a marketplace to purchase our applications online. The game plan is to offer an affordable suite of apps that can deliver 80-90% of the market need. Clients will be able to buy apps using a credit card and deploy them into their Microsoft 365 tenant themselves. A touchless Construction Viz deployment model will allow clients to take advantage of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem they have already purchased.

Stay tuned…

Construction Viz’s Spreadsheet Component Meets You Where You Work

Reporting |

The most common software used on construction projects is Microsoft Excel. The catch-all tool has allowed project teams to build localized solutions for tracking, reporting, and sharing project information. Unfortunately, Excel has created a problem for most project management information systems (PMIS) on the market that expect users to give up their Excel files and adopt their platform. The bottom line is that users are entrenched in Excel and, more often than not, don't give it up.

The new Construction Viz Spreadsheet component embraces Excel

Over the years, we have found that disregarding Excel in favor of only using a web-based PMIS can create resentment among project teams, with users ultimately returning to their old faithful at the end of the day.

At Lydon Solutions, we choose our battles wisely, meeting users where they work: Excel, Outlook, and Teams. We built the new Spreadsheet component to bridge the gap between our Construction Viz PMIS and Excel users, delivering a best of both worlds approach.

What is the Spreadsheet Component?

We build Construction Viz applications to use components like mini-applications that perform discrete tasks, such as attaching documents, uploading images, and capturing approvals. Components can be combined to deliver turnkey applications like RFI or daily report forms. Adding the Spreadsheet component to an application enables interaction with Excel files saved to Construction Viz, allowing users to display, modify, and extract data from worksheets.

How Does it Work?

The process of using the Spreadsheet component in a Construction Viz form would go like this:

  • Create a new form record, like a status report, and fill in the required fields.
  • Upload your Excel file(s) using the Document Attachment component within the form. The file is automatically tagged and stored in the supporting SharePoint Online library.
  • Open the Spreadsheet component in the form and select the Excel file you uploaded from the list.
  • The Spreadsheet component will display the Excel file selected and extract data from rows, columns, or cells as identified in the setup and displayed beneath the spreadsheet.
  • You can then make changes to the spreadsheet (formatting, adding columns, adding formulas, etc), save it locally, and then upload it back to the Document Attachments component.

How is this different than Excel Online and your Construction Viz Cost Report application?

Excel Online displays an Excel file in the browser once stored in a SharePoint document library. If you want to extract data from that Excel file to use in another SharePoint list, application, or report, you will need to build and maintain a Power Automate workflow. Our Cost Report application leverages a Power Automate Workflow or Microsoft Graph to extract data out of Excel, but this approach is limited to data stored within a specific Excel table.

Organizations can add the Construction Viz Spreadsheet component to any of our applications to enable their users to read and display Excel files directly without needing a workflow. The Spreadsheet component can also read data from anywhere in an Excel file (rows, columns, and cells) and is not limited to an Excel table.

To find out more about the new Spreadsheet component or any of our applications, visit Construction Viz.com to sign up for a free demo. If you are not ready for an enterprise construction management PMIS like Construction Viz but want to manage your projects in Microsoft 365, you can visit LydonSolutions.com and submit a request for a free one-hour consultation to help you on your way.

Managing Multiple Construction Projects with Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Online

Project Management Tools |

So, you want to use Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Online to manage your construction projects? With out-of-the-box SharePoint, you will have to decide whether you will use one site per project or multiple projects per site. Fortunately, Construction Viz is flexible enough to accommodate both approaches.

Two Ways to Set Up Microsoft SharePoint to Manage Construction Projects

Before we highlight the value Construction Viz can bring, let’s look at the two ways you can setup SharePoint to manage multiple projects and the pros and cons of each approach:

Option 1: Create a SharePoint site for every project.

  • Pro: This approach ensures you wall off project data between projects and lets you easily restrict permissions to each site.
  • Con: Going this route requires more administration to update and maintain multiple site configurations and aggregate data for reporting.

Option 2: Create a single site for all projects

  • Pro: This approach makes it easier to aggregate and report on your project data.
  • Con: Using a single site can make permissions management complex and complicated depending on security requirements. You also have to decide how to define a project across all of the SharePoint assets (e.g., pages, folders, and project metadata across lists and libraries).

Unfortunately, there is no right or wrong way; the approach often depends on many factors. However, whatever method you select, Construction Viz can streamline the process for you.

How Construction Viz Simplifies Managing Multiple Projects in SharePoint

When we designed the Construction Viz Hub, we wanted to give clients the ability to manage projects the way they want in the same application within Microsoft SharePoint. With Construction Viz, you can manage a project, program, or portfolio within one site or multiple. It’s up to you!

Highlights of Construction Viz’s Multi-Project Management Features 

Simplified access management – We built our own access management solution on top of SharePoint to streamline the process of adding internal and external users to our applications. This custom solution reduces the administrative burden of permissions management.

Expanded project settings – We integrated multi-project information across all the apps within a deployment. We also made it so that project pickers and default values can be unique by application, allowing for robust configuration depending on deployment requirements.

Expanded personnel settings – We incorporated both SharePoint user and non-user management within a central location for easier access management. This feature allows for easier administration of access and distribution groups across projects.

Expanded project-specific company settings – We added the ability to assign companies to one or more projects so they can be restricted and re-used across multiple projects or a program.

Included data and reporting rollup by program and portfolio – We built data rollup capabilities and reports for one or more sites to report project status across the portfolio.

We made all these design considerations so that Construction Viz can provide you with the best way to manage your projects, programs, and portfolios in the most efficient way possible. You can learn more about the capabilities and features of Construction Viz on our website.

The new Construction Viz Questionnaire component provides even more choice

Project Management Tools |

In construction, questionnaires are essential for gathering qualitative and quantitative information on a project. As a project manager, you want your field team to use questionnaires to report on various construction activities including, but not limited to, job site safety, project progress, quality control, identification of issues and defects, and adherence to specification and contractual requirements.

For those using Construction Viz, you may already be familiar with our standard Area of Work (AOW) component which allows you to create ad hoc questions in the Daily Report or Inspection forms. Field personnel respond to the AOW questions through set yes, no, and N/A response fields. While the functionality of the AOW component has worked great for documenting and reporting on field activities and project progress, we wanted to give our clients even more flexibility when creating unique questionnaires.

Area of Work (AOW) Component

Introducing the new customized “Questionnaire” component, for any Construction Viz form!

The new “Questionnaire” component expands on our standard AOW component in multiple ways:

  • Custom Deployment. Your customized “Questionnaire” component is deployed per your requirements. Name your component and choose from various response field types that will be available in questionnaires within your component, including:
    • Text fields. Capture open-ended responses.
    • Standardize responses and minimize data input.
    • Date fields. Capture key dates, such as start and/or completion dates, delivery dates.
    • Number fields. Restrict responses to numerical values to track various measurable data such as quantities, hours, cost, etc.
  • Dynamic Component Configuration. You can create multiple questionnaires within your custom component, and have full control over configuration:
    • Component Configuration. As the project progresses, you can create new, or hide old, questionnaires, and re-order the questionnaires within the component so the questions are responded to in a logical sequence of project activities, etc.
    • Questionnaire Configuration. For each questionnaire, restrict how field personnel respond to your questions by selecting from the available response field types, and configure the order of the active columns and individual questions in which they appear within the questionnaire.

New Questionnaire Component

More than one customized “Questionnaire” component can be deployed within any Construction Viz form, and each component can be uniquely customized and configured, giving you endless possibilities for gathering the information you need manage your project.

The customized “Questionnaire” component is just one of many dynamic components we have available for Construction Viz. Let us customize your construction management experience. Check out our Construction Viz features page to learn more about what’s possible. And you can schedule a consultation and demo to discover how Construction Viz can enhance your project management workflows.

No PMIS is an Island: Integrating Smartsheet and Construction Viz

Reporting |

It is not uncommon for organizations to use many disparate web-based project management tools on a construction project. From real estate transactions, environmental assessments, and contract awards to project scheduling, the mix of software systems used across construction organizations can span many different departments and stakeholders.  The challenge is integrating these various solutions into a single view of the project and ensuring the aggregated data is accurate, reliable, and timely.

Smartsheet is one such project management tool we often encounter. Smartsheet is used across many industries and can be a data source and reporting solution for construction information. So it made sense for our team to integrate Smartsheet with Construction Viz to allow our clients using this tool to have the best features of both applications.

While Smartsheet has an API for integrating data, our goal was to build flexible integrated solutions to solve our clients’ unique data challenges. Construction Viz can leverage SQL and SharePoint as the back-end database – with the specifics of how this works depending on the selected apps, client data restrictions, and client-specific customizations. Our Smartsheet integration solution thus needed to be flexible and scalable while offering real-time connectivity to Smartsheet for both SQL and SharePoint.

We deploy our SQL integration solution as an Azure WebJob within an Azure web app. Utilizing Azure web apps as the execution platform enables easy scheduling, automatic restarts, guaranteed stability and uptime, built-in logging, performance tracking, and nearly infinite scalability. Our SharePoint integration solution utilizes industry-standard connectivity via SharePoint’s REST Service.

Intergration Examples

SQL Integration highlights

  • A customer needed a Two-way integration with Smartsheet, so both systems are always up to date.
  • Users can use schedule data created in Smartsheet in our Construction Viz Project Tracker and a custom performance metrics application, so data needed to flow seamlessly between both systems.
  • ConstViz application extensions allow the Customer to add and remove Smartsheet Links as needed for a no-code expansion of the integration scope to new projects.
  • Integration can be scheduled daily with refresh rates that can be adjusted as needed.
  • For troubleshooting any potential integration issues, we implemented user-managed error logs.

SharePoint Integration highlights

  • A customer needed a simple One-way integration with Construction Viz, which allows Smartsheet to access document libraries.
  • Ability to handle large daily data loads as Construction Viz program sites may include up to 6,000 projects.
  • An integration approach that overcomes Smartsheet API limitations:
    • The Smartsheet API limits automated file attachment uploads to 30MB
    • The SharePoint online attachment limitation is 250MB
    • We built a solution to log oversized files into Smartsheet in the appropriate locations and hyperlinks back to the original SharePoint files for retrieval via other methods

Smartsheet is one of many integrations into Construction Viz (SQL and SharePoint) that we have built. From Oracle P6 to Arc GIS, we understand the client’s need to centralize data to manage large-scale construction projects. You can find out more by requesting a consultation here.

Training Made Easy with Construction Viz and Microsoft Stream

Collaboration |

If you are unfamiliar with Microsoft Stream, in a nutshell, it’s a video management service included with your Microsoft 365 subscription. To find out more, you can check out a prior post, “Microsoft 365 Stream for your Construction Videos.”

Stream home page
Stream home page

Stream isn’t just another file drop-off application. It is designed to manage videos specifically. The real value of Stream is the ability to aggregate and share all of your videos into a central location accessible from your Microsoft 365 login.

How can I use Construction Viz and Microsoft Stream to help with training project teams?

Construction Viz is an enterprise construction PMIS that can be deployed into a Microsoft 365 tenant. It allows you to leverage all Microsoft 365 services using your same Microsoft 365 credentials.

On-demand training videos can be made available as part of a Construction Viz deployment. With Stream, Construction Viz training videos can be easily uploaded and shared across Microsoft 365 Groups and Users, including guest users. Further, these videos can be accessed from within any Construction Viz Hub.

Construction Viz Links App with link to a Stream training session
Construction Viz Links App with link to a Stream training session

Want to create training videos and add them to Microsoft Stream, but you are not a videographer? Not a problem.

Microsoft has recently provided the ability to publish PowerPoint presentations directly to Stream. So, if you are a PowerPoint guru, you can easily make robust training videos from your existing presentations.

PowerPoint Publish to Stream menu
PowerPoint Publish to Stream menu

Sounds promising, but we like to use surveys and quizzes to test learning objectives.

You can add surveys and quizzes to Stream videos using Microsoft Forms. Survey results are automatically tabulated and made available within the Forms app in Microsoft 365.

Microsoft Forms quiz added to Stream training
Microsoft Forms quiz added to Stream training

What if we like to schedule and provide both in-person and virtual live training sessions?

You can live stream events in Stream! These events can be added to user calendars, and the recordings can be available for future on-demand training.

So, if you want to do video training, check out Microsoft Stream.

If you are looking for a project management information system (PMIS) that uses Microsoft 365, request a Construction Viz demo.