Description
Key Learnings
- Learn how to set up automated workflows using Autodesk Construction Cloud Connect to reduce manual intervention and streamline processes.
- Learn how to implement a document-tracking system to improve efficiency and minimize the risk of document loss.
- Learn how to use Power BI dashboards to gain visual insights into workflows and identify areas for improvement.
- Learn how to customize approval workflow for greater efficiency and control over deliverables.
Speakers
- Dariusz KiszkaDariusz Kiszka is a Senior Partner Consulting Manager specializing in training Partners on Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) products. With 10 years of industry experience, he has a strong background in customer training and has held roles as a Senior Implementation Consultant and Senior EP Technical Support. Dariusz brings valuable experience as a Structural Engineer and is dedicated to helping partners succeed in utilizing ACC products effectively.
- SSSophat SamSophat Sam is an Integration Solutions Engineering Manager with Autodesk Construction Solutions based in New York City. He joined Autodesk through the PlanGrid acquisition and has been with PlanGrid since September 2016. In his role, he works with partners and customers to provide integration solutions between Autodesk and third-party products. Prior to PlanGrid, he worked with customers across the greater New York City region to implement IBM enterprise content management solutions. He has a Bachelor of Arts from Hampshire College and a Master of Architecture from University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
DARIUSZ KISZKA: Good morning, everyone. Welcome in today AU class, Simplify Your Life with ACC Connect. We will dive into different examples of workflow automations to show you the capabilities of ACC Connect and Power BI tool.
Before we start, as a safe harbor statement, mainly to remind you of the product changes and the availability of tools that we know. This presentation contains the information, opinions, data supplied by third parties, and Autodesk assumes no responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of such information.
Let's start with a short introduction. My name is Dariusz Kiszka. I'm a Senior Partner Services Manager based in Barcelona. I have over eight years of experience with AEC collection and cloud products, products like Revit, [INAUDIBLE], AutoCAD, Revit Cloud Worksharing. Previously, I've been working as a structural engineer in several countries across Europe, mainly Poland, Portugal, and Spain.
And I joined Autodesk five years ago as a technical support specialist for enterprise customers. Afterwards, I've been part of product implementation team. And currently, I'm assigned both to customers and partners to drive adoption for Autodesk Construction Cloud and share the best practices. Today, there's Sophat Sam joining me. Sophat, if you would like to introduce yourself.
SOPHAT SAM: Great, and thanks for having me, Dariusz. So again, my name is Sophat Sam. I manage our team of integration solutions engineering within the ACS business unit of Autodesk. I'm based out of Brooklyn, New York, but primarily, our team works worldwide, assisting our customers and partners in terms of building integrations between the Autodesk Construction Cloud products and usually third-party products. Today, we'll see something slightly different, but I'm really excited about that.
I joined Autodesk through the PlanGrid acquisition that happened back in 2019. Between the two, I've been working between PlanGrid and others for almost seven years now coming up. My background is more in architecture. So I have a Bachelor's of Arts and a Master's of Architecture from UMass Amherst. But primarily, I've worked in the IT industry, helping customers build and basically solution examples or build solutions that will help them streamline their business processes.
All right, so for today's agenda, again, we're going to be focusing on a very specific workflow that is based on the master information delivery plan. This is kind of the focus of our session today and really using that as a basis for how customers can use a combination of our Autodesk Construction Cloud Connect product as well as our Autodesk Docs product to accomplish that master information delivery plan.
We'll go through those two products first, and then we'll show you how customers are using these two products to standardize on a master information delivery plan all the way from the start of the project, where you're defining what is required, to the end of the product or project, when you are handing over those documents over. So again, we'll go through this in real detail based off of what we've done and seen customers request. But again, that's kind of the focus is really highlighting these two products and how it can be used to fit into the master information delivery plan.
So before we get into that, I do want to give a quick introduction into the Autodesk Construction Cloud Connect tool-- from here on out, I'll call it ACC Connect just for short-- and how we're leveraging that for the master information delivery plan. So within the Autodesk Construction Cloud platform, there are typically two types of integrations that will help us accomplish our required integrations. We won't go through the first one very much, but those are the partner cards that you can embed within your insights dashboards. That's pretty easy to use.
The one that we'll be focusing on today is direct API integrations. These direct API integrations allow us to exchange information between our products, third-party products, using the Autodesk Platform Services to build very custom integrations.
So what do I mean when I'm referring to the Autodesk Platform Services? So the Autodesk Platform Services gives us APIs that allows us to push and pull data within the Autodesk Construction Cloud suite of products, including Autodesk Docs. This allows us to push data that then gets sent into what we would refer to as our proprietary code base. So that's our code, our databases, et cetera, to [? all the ?] [? stocks, ?] but take off, build, costs, et cetera.
So the platform services that Autodesk provides allow these integrations to be built. Autodesk Construction Cloud allows us to then take those APIs available within the platform services and build those custom integrations, whether it's to a third-party tool or within our own tools.
So this is where ACC Connect provides our customers an easy way to build these integrations without having to write those custom codes. So ACC Connect gives us the possibility to build these integrations that are both customizable to the customer's requirements, as well as using the user interface to easily map data between the different systems. So again, there are two key points to ACC Connect-- one, customers do not have to write custom code. And two, they're able to customize the workflows between the different applications as they see fit using the built-in user interface.
For most of our customers, they will be using ACC Connect to build integrations to third-party systems. On the screen, you'll see a couple of examples of what we see our customers typically integrating with. But for our session today, we'll actually be building integrations only within the Autodesk Docs platform, so being able to push and pull data within the same product, as well as the same project.
DARIUSZ KISZKA: OK, let's switch gears a little bit and step into Autodesk Docs platform. We will talk about the document management setup, things like folder structure, custom attributes, and naming standards, just to make sure that we have a good background for our recipes to be ready in place. And also later, it will help us to join the data correctly within the platform.
As a first step, let's identify the main areas according to ISO 19650 standards. There are four main areas-- Work-in-progress container, used for information that are developed by the design team. This container should be visible or accessible only for the specific team that is the originator of the files.
The second container is called Shared folder, used for the information that has been approved for sharing with relevant stakeholders or with the other appropriate members coming from different teams. Published state is used for information that has been authorized for use. In other words, we have approved either for construction or for the next stage of our project. Finally, we have also Archived state. Archived state is used to hold a complete record of all of the superseded files.
On the right-hand side, we can see also the different colors that have been mapped to each areas-- work in progress, marked in blue; shared area in pink color; published area, marked as violet color. We will use this color coding for the next slides in our presentation so that it is easier to identify where the specific attributes, the specific recipes, have been mapped for each container.
To create the right automations, we need to understand what are the attributes and tasks that will be required for each container for Work-in-progress, for Shared, and for Published area. We have three separate buckets of information-- the custom attributes that needs to be tracked within the interface, the custom attributes that are needed for the automation workflows, and also the custom attributes that we need for reporting, in our case, for Power BI dashboards.
As an example, we may need a revision drawing attribute to be displayed in the Autodesk Docs interface. On the other hand, we may need to have some other attributes, like parent folder, that is not relevant for the users within the project but may be important later to have a better overview when accessing data in Power BI dashboard.
The workflow attributes are the easiest to specify. I would recommend to start from those first. It is easier to specify the information that we need, for example, planned delivery date attribute to compare the files with today's date. Let's go through each of them through each bucket.
So for the Work-in-progress, we will track the document, like title, quality check attribute, description. Copied to attribute will give us also the hyperlink where the file has been copied. And also, we have the planned delivery date to see and compare the current date with the planned date.
In Shared folder, the most important attributes are coming from the naming convention. And also, we have the document health to track the current date and the planned date. We have also the attributes with hyperlinks, like copied from, copied to, so that it gives us the quick access to the right document versions in Work-in-progress and in Shared folder.
Published area, we want to track the revision, the document stage, the drawing status. Copied from attribute will give us also this hyperlink to the previous version in Shared folder. And also, we would like to track the planned delivery date.
OK, next step is to classify which attributes can be automatically assigned and which of them should be added manually. The user-assigned have the attributes like drawing status, revision date. This is up to the decision of the user. However, there might be also some automated attributes, like the document health, the copied from/copied to hyperlinks depending on the action previously done within the platform, or the planned delivery date in terms of the date when the drawing should be submitted for the different audience. We will have also some review comments information that may be also automatically triggered when the right approval status has been assigned.
In our example, we will also use the naming standards coming from ISO 19650. So all attributes are displayed in the box on the right-hand side. And as a reminder, for the naming convention, we will use project, originator, volume, level, type, role, and number. And as related attributes, I've identified stage, drawing status, and revision that will be later tracked for our Power BI dashboards.
Within the ACC project, we can also see our folder structure. So our Work-in-progress area is marked with number 1. So each different subfolder, like architectural, structural, and MEP [? discipline ?] is defined. Similar thing we have also for the Shared folder. This time, we also have the naming convention involved. We have our Published area, our Archive folder. And apart from that, we have also the administration that will help us to create the different document placeholders and also track the planned delivery timeline with the Excel spreadsheet.
Besides, we have also the naming standards convention that consists of different naming part that is displayed in green color and all of the additional attributes displayed in orange.
OK, once we have the setup in place on our document management side, we need to focus on the workflow itself. So how can we manage the document deliverables? How to automate some processes? And how to make our life easier when tracking the information with MIDP? Let's dive into the workflow schema.
This is the main framework that has been developed based on the experience with different clients. We've tried to put the most important requests together so that it will help us to aggregate the different automations and ultimately to track the document properly within the Work-in-progress, Shared, and Published containers.
On the left side, we have those containers displayed. So each of them will have different workflows and different attributes that we would like to track. Next, we have also the different automation processes marked with the different numbers on top. And ultimately, we have also the dashboards, like dashboard D1, D2, D3, that will help us to get the better overview of what's going on in the project and how to track the information correctly.
OK, let's start. So now we will dive into the Work-in-progress area, when we can create the different document placeholders. And the document-creating process is an iteration coming from the design, collaboration, the model coordination part. That is outside this scope. We will focus mainly on the document management process with the quality check before the files are ready for the Shared container.
On the right side, we can see the different activities in sequence. Firstly, we will create the document placeholders. Then the other team members will also upload the different file versions, assigning the different attributes as the iteration process so that the file is ready for the quality check. And afterwards, we will have also the quality check attribute, where the document controller can step in can review those files, check if everything is correct and meet the right requirements.
And as a final step, we will transfer those documents from Shared folder-- we will transfer those documents into Shared folder. The automation recipe was synchronized, also the different attributes, like copy from/copy to, and it will also assign the planned delivery date for each document. Let's see this information live in our demonstration video.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- So for the first step, we will create placeholder documents using our example spreadsheet. Afterwards, we will assign a Ready value to our Quality Check custom attribute to notify the document controllers that the files are ready to proceed.
Switching over to ACC, we can see different folders for the administration of our Placeholder and Planned Delivery spreadsheets. We also have our Work-in-progress, Shared, and Published folders that will store documents that have been approved from the approval workflow. So let's navigate to the Placeholders spreadsheet.
Some files are already specified, so I will go ahead and add a new document in the spreadsheet. In this example, we're using PDF files, but we can support any document types allowed within ACC. I will input a new number and a row using the dropdowns built into the spreadsheet. I can also simply copy and paste from the previous row with the same attributes. I can also add in the document descriptions, which will be populated in both the title attribute and in the description attribute.
Once saved, we will see a new document version created, and this is what triggers the ACC Connect recipe. In the Work-in-progress folder, we see that the documents are now being populated based off of the information from the spreadsheet. The Quality Check custom attribute is automatically assigned as Not Ready.
We can also upload documents directly to ACC from our local drive. This will be an iterative process until we are ready for the next steps. As I add files directly, I can also assign the document title. In this example, we're going to go in and add in the "Stairs S1" and "Stairs S2" titles to these documents.
For these documents, I can go in and assign the Ready attribute under the Quality Check status so that the document controller can review the files. I will use the "assign attributes to multiple files option" so that I can apply this across multiple files.
- The next step is to review documents and assign Approved Quality Check attribute for selected files. As a document controller, I will navigate to Saved searches and select the right filter. After reviewing the documents, I will assign Approved Quality Check.
Now it's time to copy files to Shared folder, making sure they follow the right naming convention. I will select the files and select the destination folder. As naming convention is applied to that folder, I need to amend the file names and related attributes. For bulk edit, I can select the numbering in sequence. And I can add related attributes, such as status, revision, and stage.
Checking the previous file name, I can assign the right document number. Files are generated in new folder along with the attributes, following naming convention. Additionally, in Work-in-progress folder, I can see the Copied To attribute as a hyperlink to the shared file. When I navigate to the Shared folder, I can see Copied From attribute with the hyperlink to the original file.
The final step is to assign planned delivery dates. We will use Excel spreadsheet that will be embedded in ACC Connect recipes. As I copied files from placeholders, the planned delivery date is automatically assigned. However, sometimes, we may miss some document in our spreadsheet. Let's navigate to the Excel document in Admin folder and add this item.
Saving a new version will trigger ACC Connect recipe to add this information to Work-in-progress, Shared, and Published folder at the same time.
[END PLAYBACK]
SOPHAT SAM: So just to review what we saw in those videos, this is a diagram of what we kind of highlighted in that demo video at a high level. So we're going to dig a little deeper into what's happening behind the scenes here when we're using ACC Connect to automate some of those processes.
So first, we need to talk about this concept of what a trigger is. The trigger within ACC Connect is what is going to start the automation or initialize the automation. What you saw in the video is two types of triggers.
So a customer or a user can go in and create a new request for a placeholder file. Once they create that request for a placeholder file, that then tells ACC Connect to trigger our workflow to create those placeholder files. That's one example where, depending on when the customer wants those placeholder files to be created, they can trigger that manually.
What you also saw is that we can upload a file into the Work-in-progress folder, and that automatically triggers the ACC Connect recipe to assign things like the Not Ready status to those files as well. So within just those two workflows of creating the placeholder files, it can be manually created when the user updates a file or automatically populating fields and attributes when they do upload a file.
At the bottom of the screen, we can also trigger the workflows at specific times in the day. So for example, if you are looking to just monitor for changes and, at the end of the day, apply those changes, we can automatically trigger the workflow to run at the end of the day, read the latest files that you have in your workflows or in your spreadsheets, and run the workflow based off of the data within those spreadsheets. So again, there's a lot of flexibility within ACC Connect for us to, again, manually trigger the workflows, but also automatically trigger those based off of specific events but also based off of specific time schedules.
Once those workflows are triggered, this is now where we can define exactly what the recipe should be doing based off of those workflows, those automations. So again, if you were to create a placeholder file, that placeholder-- sorry, a placeholder spreadsheet, that placeholder spreadsheet can then be a source for the files that will be generated. So we can go through, read all of the line items from that spreadsheet, and automatically generate the files in the Work-in-progress so that you have the files and the attributes already applied.
This can also apply automatic statuses, like the Not Ready for anything that is newly uploaded. So again, if files are uploaded without anyone changing anything, the workflow can automatically update those statuses. And then, again, based off of what you've done in that period in the day, that data can then be exported out and scheduled to be sent into an external system, which you will see later, such as Power BI, so capturing all the changes that's happened and making sure that those changes are correctly recorded in a tool such as Power BI.
DARIUSZ KISZKA: Perfect. Now we will switch to the Shared folder, where we can trigger the approval workflow process. The document controller will have a good insight into the current file versions stored in that space for tracking the document health. There are main key activities for this space. So based on the planned delivery date, the automation recipe 2b, we compare the current date with the planned delivery date and assign the right document health status afterwards.
We will also trigger the approval workflow. And as an overview, we will use the progress tracking dashboard to review the pending documents and see which of them should be followed up. So this is a really powerful tool for the document controller to understand what is the progress of the project, what is the current status, which documents are still pending, which of them we need to follow up, which of them should be already delivered officially, comparing the planned delivery date, so that you can action on behalf of the other users or notify the other users that are involved in this process.
For the approval workflow, we have the three main buckets of personas. So we have the initiator is the person who submits the drawings for review and that will also notify the different reviewers. We have the reviewers. In our example, it will be only one reviewer that will add the different comments and markups to the documents.
And ultimately, we have also approver is the person that decides if the document has been approved, should be approved with comments, or it should be rejected. He will also assign the required attribute, like state, drawing status, and revision, so that we can track it later for the other dashboards.
On the right-hand side, I've also put the approval workflow settings in case you would like to review it after this session. We will automatically copy the files into our destination folder, so into our Published folder. And we will also enable to copy the markups with those documents. The drawing stage, the status, and revision attributes are mandatory. Therefore, they are required to be filled out before the approval workflow is finished by them and approved by the approver.
OK, let's watch now in our demo project to see how those information are put in place and how our automations could also help us to improve the whole workflow experience for the end users and also for the document controllers.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- For the next part of this process, we need to submit documents for review. The Document Health custom attribute help us assess the time left to meet the delivery deadline. The documents have been uploaded to the Shared folder. The Document Health is assigned to each file by comparing today's date with the planned delivery date.
Additionally, I can get redirected to the specific file version based on the hyperlink assigned to the Copy From custom attribute. With that option, we can open the specific file version coming from the Work-in-progress folder. As documents have been changed to meet our specific naming standards, the document name is also added to the Work-in-progress folder.
To submit documents for review, I can select the files and use the Submit for review option. Afterwards, I need to select the correct approval process and add the reviewer and review name. In some cases, files are missing, so we can add them directly through the user interface. Once that's done, I will click Submit, and an email notification will be sent to the reviewer. Once the review is submitted, it will be displayed in the Reviews tab of ACC.
- The next step in the approval process is to review documents, adding comments, and markups. As a reviewer, I have received notification via email. Let's open this review. I can preview the document names included in this review and their folder location paths. Let's start a review and open the first file.
I can add markup selecting the specific area. Afterwards, I will adapt the markup to meet my expectations. We need to remember that only published markups are displayed for the other members.
Let's add a sample comment. The comment item can be also accessed via Review interface. I will add the remaining comments for the other documents.
To finalize this step, I will submit my work to the approver to make final decision if the drawing should be accepted. Sending the email notification, I will make sure it will reach the right person.
- For the final step of our approval workflow, we now need to go in and approve the documents as well as including required information, such as the stage, revision, and status for each document. As an approver, I can see the items assigned and where it is in its progress.
Going into the review itself, I can now go in and see what actions need to be performed. Within the top panel of the screen, we can see all the information of who performed the previous steps, as well as the due dates assigned. The attributes with any of the red stars here indicate that they are required prior to us approving these documents. So I can go in and modify each one or do a batch edit and update those attributes as needed.
I can see all the comments provided by different members. In this example, we only have one reviewer. However, the process can be extended to multiple reviewers before it comes to this final stage. Again, I can assign the review status one by one within the main interface, or I can perform this action from the BIM viewer itself.
From there, I can see all the published markups that have been created by the different users. I will go in and add the approver comments and then any additional markups that are required.
Again, we do need to make sure the markups are published so that it is visible to others on the project. To speed up this process, I will copy the markups between different files.
As a final step, I can close the review process and select the option to copy the markups to the destination folder. Afterwards, this can now distribute notifications to the selected users of this review process. Once the documents are copied, the destination folder will have a hyperlink that will be presented. This will allow users to be redirected back to the publish area from this review.
Now we can see that the status attribute has been changed in the Published folder. When I redirect to the Shared folder, the same value has also been applied. Ultimately, all the metadata is aligned and consistent between the Work-in-progress, the Shared, and the Published folders.
- The last step is to provide a right insight into the project, tracking the progress of the documents uploaded to the Shared folder. Thanks to Power BI tool, we will filter documents and get navigated back to the system by embedded hyperlinks. The D1 dashboard is displayed within ACC Insight service. I will open the hyperlink to display the board in full screen.
On top of the dashboard, we will see multiple filters. The main table contains document name with hyperlink and title, naming standard attributes, document health, hyperlinks to file versions in Work-in-progress and in Published folder, date, when the file has been uploaded to the Shared folder, review metadata, such as stage, status, revision, approval workflow status, along with the reviews table, checking if transmittal has been sent, yes or no, and finally, the delivery status and the date when the file has been uploaded to the published area.
Besides, on the dashboard, we can find graph-filtering documents for architectural, structural, and mechanical disciplines; table showing which documents are not delivered, in other words, not copied to the Published space; and the health status breakdown for those documents. Selecting the right information in the pie chart, I can filter documents per Document Health attribute. I can also filter documents by shared subfolder, in this example, architectural drawings, structural drawings, and mechanical drawings.
Let's filter the files per revision. All tables are automatically updated. We can see five documents in the list. By selecting the hyperlink, I can get redirected to the document in Shared folder. Using the hyperlink Copied From, I can navigate to the specific file version in Work-in-progress folder. The hyperlink Copied To will bring me to the file in Published space.
When I select the document with Approved status, I can quickly navigate to the Reviews table. And the hyperlink will redirect me to the selected approval workflow, where I can check the comments.
The bottom-right table shows the documents that were not delivered that were not copied to the Published area. The pie chart also shows the distribution in terms of document health. This gives me a good overview of which documents should be prioritized in approval workflow.
[END PLAYBACK]
SOPHAT SAM: So what you saw is really a result of a lot of automation that's happening behind the scenes that feeds all of that data to a Power BI dashboard. Again, this is a sampling of what that workflow looks like in terms of what was built out. But we'll go through, again, one by one how each one of these were accomplished using a combination of Docs and ACC Connect and then Power BI.
So for each one of these workflows, as you can see, we haven't really changed much in terms of the trigger that was used. So for example, for recipe 2b, we're still depending on an auto-trigger. So whenever a user uploads a file to the system, ACC Connect can detect that the file was uploaded and then cross-reference that with our Excel file that tells us the health of that file.
Additionally, for 2c, we're now using the auto-trigger but on a scheduled basis. So at the end of the day, we're going to run a workflow that then takes a collection of all of the files that were uploaded and compares that and tracks it with our spreadsheet.
And then lastly, for 3a, we're using really a combination of ACC Connect that can detect files being pushed to different folders alongside the approval process. So at the end of the approval process, you have the option to automatically copy files to a different folder. Once those files are copied, ACC Connect can detect that and apply our automation to those copied files.
So here, you're seeing a combination of user-initiated workflows or triggers, scheduled triggers at the end of the day, and then also, doc's trigger workflows at the end of an approval process. So again, a good collection of the things that you can do with our ACC Connect triggers.
Beyond the triggers, here, we're now doing much more advanced actions within the ACC Connect platform. So a lot of what we're doing with the planned delivery is cross-referencing that to a spreadsheet that we have already uploaded. So for each file, we want to cross-reference the planned delivery date and assign it a health status. So behind the scenes, there is much more advanced logic that's happening to really compare two different datas, the planned delivery date and obviously the health of that document.
Additionally, within ACC Connect, not only can you cross-reference external documents or documents within the system, you can also generate what are databases. So for each of the files that we are processing, we can generate what's called a lookup table within ACC Connect. And then for 2c, at the end of the day, we're taking that lookup table, which is a lightweight database, and pushing that so that our Power BI dashboards are updated to match exactly what happens at the end of that day.
Beyond that, obviously, we can more than just read data from the system. What you see in 3a is really comparing data from multiple folders and then assigning specific custom attributes to files based off of the data between the two folders. So again, this is using pretty complex-- I won't call it complex, but it's pretty interesting logic to make sure that we have the correct data from the spreadsheets, from the files that are uploaded, but also the files that are approved to make sure that we have a good understanding of where our files are in their planning process.
DARIUSZ KISZKA: Now we will switch to the Published folder as the last step. Here, we will track the approved documents coming from different disciplines, in our example, the architectural, structural, and mechanical team. The main activities that we will take into account is to track the review comments that are coming from the reviews. We will extract this information into the different CSV tables so that we can understand which documents have been approved with comments, and where are the comments coming from the review process?
Apart from that, we will also send the transmittals. We will send the transmittals from the Published area, so from our destinations area, to make sure that the approved documents have reached the right audience. And we will also track it within our master information delivery plan. So this stage also gives us a good insight into the actual versus planned deliverables.
And we will use Power BI dashboards. That will help us to track this information across the full life cycle coming through the different stages, so coming through the brief stage, our concept stage, and the design stage. Let's watch it in the demo video.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- Firstly, we will check the review comments based on the automatic extraction in the form of CSV files. Each CSV table refers to the specific document version copied to the Published folder. We will see all the comments exported from review. Besides, the document in the Published area has a hyperlink in Rev Comments attribute so that the user can be quickly redirected.
Published area is one big container that aggregates all the files coming from different disciplines. To filter data, we can use Shared Folder attribute and choose data for specific subfolder, in this example, architect discipline.
In this space, we will also find the Comments folder, where all the reviews' comments are extracted for specific documents. Each document has a status assigned coming from the review process. Additionally, for documents with Approved with comments status, the Rev Comments attribute gives a hyperlink that will redirect us to the latest CSV file. The CSV document is extracted at the end of the working day. Inside, we can see the document version coming from Published area and all comments added by different users, along with the date created.
When the new file version will be approved with comments, again, a new CSV file version, V2, will be extracted. And we can track this information, checking the document version displayed in column V2.
As an addition to this process, we can also open the document and link the markup to the Comments folder. This way, we will help other team members with the mobile app to get redirected quickly for the comments log.
I'm navigating to the right folder. The CSV file will have the same name as my PDF document. Let's select the file and create this link. Now all the users are able to see the file as a reference to the Approved with comments markup.
- So the next step is to create a transmittal from our reviews. As all the files are already in place, we will use the transmittal tool to send out and notify users that the files are ready. I will navigate to the previously created review. There are two ways to create transmittals. The first option is to use the Transmit all from this review. In our example, though, we will only transmit the approved documents.
Once I select the documents and hit Transmit, I can then enter the transmittal title and recipients lists. Within the settings, we can choose to transmit the files directly from the target folder, which is our publish area. Once the transmittal is sent, we get redirected to the transmittal interface, where we can preview the package information. Within the transmittal interface, we can find the documents with the description, as well as who updated the documents, who is sending the transmittal, as well as a list of all the recipients for this transmittal.
- The final step is progress tracking with the use of Power BI tool. The second dashboard will help us to have a good insight into reviews and transmittals. Within Insight module, D2 - Reviews and Transmittal dashboard is embedded in partner card. The hyperlink will redirect us to the wider screen.
Let's start with reviews. On top, we can see different filters. Below, the main table contains review ID, title, status, and approval workflow template, who created review, and the due date for the open reviews, claimed assignee, and [INAUDIBLE], if applicable, for overdue items.
Next to the main table, we can see the charts presenting healthy, overdue, and closed reviews, reviews per status, reviews per creator, reviews per company that creator belongs to. Below is the list of documents and comments containing the document name, when the comment has been added, the comment information, who created the comment.
Selecting the filter, like Closed review, will filter the data both for reviews and for the transmittals. We can filter per review status. When selecting review ID, we can get redirected to the item in the platform. Selecting the review, we will see the document comments in the table below. By clicking the company name, the reviews will be filtered automatically.
Let's navigate to the transmittal part displayed on the right-hand side. First table represents transmittal's link to reviews. The table below aggregates documents included in each transmittal. Below, we have a chart representing the member who created the transmittal. At the very bottom, we have from which company the transmittal has been sent. Selecting the top filter, I will be displaying the transmittals created by user.
Within the main transmittal table, we can click on ID. That will redirect me back to the system. Clicking on transmittal, we can preview the document list. Similar to what we had before, we can also navigate to the charts, showing the distribution of who created the transmittal and aggregating data by company.
The last dashboard for today's session is called D3 - Master Information Delivery Plan. We will track document deliverables and track the project progress. Within Insight module, the dashboard is already embedded and refreshed daily. Let's click on hyperlink to navigate to the full screen.
We will start from the right-hand side. The top table represents document list derived from previously used Planned Delivery Excel document. We can check if the file is already uploaded to Work-in-progress folder, to Shared folder, and to Published folder. Below this table, the graph represents the total percentage of documents per each folder. To track total document number, we have a box at the bottom of this section.
Now we will go to the left-hand side. On top, there are multiple slicers that can be applied to filter data. Right below, we have the main table aggregating the latest document revisions per each phase. Here, we have five different sections-- document reference, coming from naming standards; document details, like name, title, and format; brief stage, showing document revision, status, delivery date, planned delivery date; the same for concept stage and for the design stage.
To view all document revisions and delivered dates, we will use a breakdown below. For each phase, we have a detailed table along with the filters for the brief stage, for concept stage, and for the design stage.
Finally, at the very bottom, we have a good overview of each phase-- how many documents are delivered; in brief stage, the total percentage of delivered documents and the number; similar for the concept stage and for the design stage.
On the bottom-right corner, we can see the total progress of the project, aggregating the stages with different weightage-- brief stage, 30%; concept stage, 30%; and the design stage, 40%. With those graphs, we can easily track the progress and how much work still needs to be done.
Now I will filter documents per discipline, for example, mechanical discipline. Selecting the file name, I can get redirected to the latest document version.
When the document is highlighted, I can also track the previous file versions assigned to different phases. For brief stage, I can select the hyperlink to see the file in the system. The same happens when selecting the previous revisions in the concept stage. Selecting the concept stage, I will see only documents that reach that stage. When filtering per brief stage, we can see only documents that haven't been submitted beyond this milestone.
Firstly, we will check the review comments.
[END PLAYBACK]
SOPHAT SAM: Right, so what you saw there is really the efforts of a lot of automation happening behind the scenes to really help our customers implement this master information delivery plan. As you saw through the video, you can create very complex dashboards out of the data that's available within our Autodesk Docs platform. But obviously, there has to be some automation that's pushing data to Power BI or other dashboarding tools as well. So the last part of these workflows is taking the data from the Published folders and feeding it into a source system or a destination system like Power BI.
So just as we saw before in terms of what we are triggering within these workflows, again, these are all automated for the most part. So for 3b, you can automate based off of the schedule of your choice. So, for example, if you want to run these automations every five minutes and check for comments on those drawings, you can do so. If you want to create those export to Power BI so that your dashboards are refreshed every 30 minutes, you can do so as well.
But then, ultimately, you do have full control over when these automations will run. And for 3c, we just want a catalog of everything that's happened in the day. So we're going to schedule it at the end of day, wherever you may be, and then run our workflow based off of these different schedules.
In terms of what we're doing with these recipes now, so as I mentioned earlier, a lot of this data is coming from the Autodesk Platform Services. So in certain instances where the data is not directly available through our APIs in Autodesk Platform Services, we do have to get a little creative.
And in this instance, we are working directly with the data connector extracts-- so taking all of the comments from the data connector extracts and being able to tie that together with the documents that are being approved, being reviewed, et cetera and getting the comments for those review processes, and then taking that data for those review processes and being able to pass that along to Power BI.
So again, this is really an interesting way of solving a problem where the APIs on our Autodesk Platform Services may not have a direct tie-in to reviews' comments. But the data connector itself does have that data. So we can take that data and tie it all in together.
And obviously, the end goal here is to get all of that data and make that available so that we can build out those Power BI dashboards, so taking all of the aggregated data from not just the data connector itself but everything from the Published folder-- so the custom attributes, the health statuses, et cetera-- and making sure we can export that data in an efficient manner so that it can be consumed within Power BI.
And in this instance, ACC Connect is allowing our customers to do that by exporting those files directly either from the data connector, from our APIs, or from our lookup tables, as I mentioned earlier, and making sure that those files are updated and then sent appropriately to Power BI.
DARIUSZ KISZKA: OK, finally, as a summary, I would like to show you the Mural boards that help us to prepare for this presentation. As you probably noticed, we had quite complex solutions for different stages or for different sections, like a Work-in-progress, Shared, and Published. And all sections that are displayed here have been also presented in the previous slides.
So within the Mural, we have three main areas. We have the Autodesk Docs part, mainly to define what is the ACC project setup, what is the folder structure, what is the attribute definition, and, finally, what are the values for those attributes in the dropdown list.
We have in the middle the ACC Connect part for the automated workflows, for the sequence of those automated workflows as well. So in the main table, we can see also the aggregated information, and how it should be mapped into our deliverable workflow scheme that is displayed below the main table.
Ultimately, the Power BI dashboards is the last section, so the dashboard that gives us the detailed information in terms of what happened with Work-in-progress folder, what happened in the Shared folder, and what is also tracked within the Published area. Probably we should start from this slide at the very beginning, but didn't want to scare you of the scope of how much information we will cover within today's AU class.
It also gives us the right framework for your own goals and objectives that you would like to achieve within the workflow automations. Lots of those recipes that we have created and presented today can be also reused in the future, right? So don't be limited with only one specific custom attribute. This is just the example to show you what kind of information you can display or automate within ACC project and also what are the different triggers that can run the recipe automatically or maybe by selecting the specific hyperlink.
Finally, in terms of the outcomes for today's class, the first one is to show you the train of thought demonstrating how to tackle the complex framework, showing the plan-to-execution process. So each stage needs to be really carefully planned in terms of the setup within ACC project, in terms of the setup with ACC Connect recipes.
And ultimately, if we want to display something within the dashboards, we also need to understand how this data will be connected and how they will be interacting together. I hope that with the demonstration videos explaining also the recipes, it will help you to understand what is the right process to tackle the difficult framework.
The second part is also to inspire you with the examples. So those examples were coming from the different suggestions for the client, basically showing them power of ACC Connect and power of Power BI tools. I hope that you can understand the value that this product brings into your day-to-day life and also how this can simplify your life in the future.
Ultimately, we want to also show you the end-to-end workflow for document tracking. So in many cases, the complex workflows is built based on the simple solutions applied to each stage. So even though it may look really complex at the end of this class, if we dive into the specific section within the AU class handout, we will see that each solution has a specific limited steps or number of steps, right? So with that, you can also plan and adjust those solutions to fit our requirements to bring it to the next level.
And that's all for from us for today's session. Thank you very much for your attention. And I hope that you enjoyed both the prerecorded sessions, also the explanation part, and the different information that have been provided in today's session. Thank you very much, and we wish you a great rest of the day.
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