HeavyBid Monthly Webinar February 2024

Alright, everybody. Welcome to the webinar monthly webinar series for the month of February. I'm your host, Aaron Alshouse. I'm the technical product manager for HeavyBid. Joining me today is the product manager for all of estimating, Amanda Isles. She'll be helping me, either field questions or relaying questions as they come up. The topic of today's conversation is UGM twenty twenty four feedback and recap. So, essentially, what we're gonna be talking about today is kinda how how some of the cards came in that we, that we received. And what I mean by cards is basically some of the suggestions and ideas that came in from y'all while we were at UGM, how some of those cards came in. We're We're gonna talk about some of the cards that were just kind of a yes. We're gonna do that. And then we're gonna talk about some of the cards, or some of the some of the suggestions that you know, I might be a little bit on the fence about either whether or not we want to do it or whether or not, or more so, how would we go about doing it? And the idea is I'm hoping to get some feedback from y'all, during this meeting on some of those topics so that we can make sure that if we decide to implement these, we implement them in a way that's useful for y'all. So without further ado, let's jump right on into it. So taking a look at UGM requests, we received thirty seven requests through the ideas portal. So the ideas portal for anyone who's unaware is ideas dot h c s s dot com. From there, you can post, an idea or a suggestion on any of the products. They're all categorized heavy bid, pre con, heavy job, safety plans, so on and so forth. Basically, what that allows, us to do is when an idea comes through, it comes straight to my inbox, comes straight through to me in my email, and I can respond accordingly. Some of those, we might get additional people to see those ideas so other customers can see those ideas, and they can do what's called an upvote. So if they think it's a great idea, they can upvote it as well. So if a certain idea has eight, nine, ten people that upvote it, I know, okay. This is gonna benefit a lot more people. It might get a little more priority than I might have originally given it or thought about giving it. We had sixty four requests through the classroom discussion. So as you're attending a class at UGM, questions come up, ideas come up. We had in every class, we had people in the back of the room taking notes. So any idea that was given or any suggestion that was given was written down. We threw it all into a giant spreadsheet, that we've got that we're still going through, basically, to sort, categorize, and prioritize those suggestions and ideas. We had ten requests come from the roundtables. So we had roundtable discussions on specific topics, specific workflows, how, people are doing certain things in the industry. We had ten requests come from those discussions, and then we had two, requests come from the industry leaders panels. So the industry leader panels were discussions from other, construction experts, other folks that use the software just like you, and they're giving their take on a specific topic. Now as I as I mentioned a minute ago, we're still going through the full gambit of of all these questions. I wanna make sure that I take my time. I give every question the the full attention that it deserves and make sure that I can visualize or describe the issue properly, to development if we decide to do it. And if we don't decide to do it, I wanna make sure that especially if it's in the ideas portal or if I have a name attached to the suggestion, I can follow-up with the individual and essentially just discuss, either why or why not we might wanna do something. So taking a look at some of the things we are going to do, the first one we're gonna do is improvements to escalation reporting. So I received requests from several folks actually, about different aspects of escalation reporting. But the key or the what's the word I'm looking for? The, the consensus was that the reporting on escalation within heavy bid is lacking. So that is definitely something we are going to work on. We're gonna build a new report specifically around escalation, that addresses multiple aspects of the escalation breakdown and logic to address most of the most of the questions and comments that that I received to surrounding escalation. Following up an escalation, multiple requests came in for this specific item, and that's adding escalation as a key indicator. When someone asked that, I was like, wait. We don't already have that? And I went through and I looked and I'm like, sure enough, we don't have, total escalation as a key indicator. So we're gonna put that in. That that work item has actually already been through development refinement, and it's slated to be released before the end of this calendar year. So that one, we're gonna take care of. Retain self perform logic when copying bid items. This, was brought up a couple times, in one on one discussions I had with folks out in the hall as well as in a couple classrooms. This one is actually a pretty big item. There is a lot of stuff in the background that has to be copied over, and we have to make sure that a lot of links, a lot of logic is retained when we're copying. But it is something that a lot of people request. So it is something we're going to do, but it is a fairly large undertaking. Add a master estimate filter to back up multiple estimates. This is another one of those cards when someone said brought it up. My first response is, we don't already do that. So jumping into, HeavyBid, when we go to back up a single estimate and we go to look up a specific, estimate, we have a filter for master estimates. Very straightforward. I can select it, and it's gonna show me my master estimates. However, when I go to back up multiple estimates, I don't have that same filter for backing up, multiple estimates. So if I want to back up all my masters at once, I would have to go through and select them. Amanda, go ahead. You're showing us your pre con screen. I'm not sure if you're supposed to be showing us heavy bid. I'm supposed to be showing you heavy bid. I thought I was in heavy bid. Okay. Let's try. Can you see heavy bid now? There you go. Okay. So let me go back through that again. I apologize about that. So when backing up, a single estimate, when I go to select an estimate, I have the ability to filter down to my master estimates. That's going to basically show me my list of master estimates, and I can pick which master estimate I want to back up. When I go to back up multiple multiple estimates, I don't have that same filter. So now if I wanna back up all of my master estimates at once, I have to scroll down through my list. End of the day, not the the end of the world, but it definitely makes doing something that should be very straightforward take more time. So we're gonna add that selection. Let me make sure that we can go back. Okay. And then adding bid item alternate description as part of the tree view search. So in heavy bid, we have the ability to search the the tree view on bid item activity and resource, and we can search by the description of the bid item. Well, the bid item also has an alternate description field. It's a longer, it's a longer field that some customers utilize for a longer description. We don't currently search by that, and the request was to include that as part of the search. So that one to me was an easy yes. We're going to do that. So we're gonna put that in as part of the search. It's not gonna require any additional setup by the end user. It's just going to include that as part of the search results. Any questions on anything that we're going to do, before we jump into some of the things that I'm either on the fence about or have questions about how you would wanna see implemented. Okay. I'm not seeing any questions coming up, so I'm gonna move right along. Next thing is gonna be items we're looking into. So the first one is the ability to recode an estimate. So, currently, there is no way to recode an estimate in HeavyBid. How do we currently make a a recode an estimate? Well, you'd have to make a copy of the estimate and then delete the prior one. Again, not the end of the world, but I shouldn't have to make a copy of an estimate simply just to be able to recode it. So we're gonna look into to making that happen. The question becomes, how do we want to handle synced estimate files? So the reason that's a question is because once it's synced, it's still just a it's another backup of an estimate that's already existing. Is that a essentially, a deal breaker to y'all as a user if that doesn't get recoded, or do we need to find a way to make that, that happen as well? Or would you want that recoded? And that's a question for the room, basically, just to to see what everyone's thoughts are on that. If anyone's interested in talking, we do have the ability to, allow you to talk. So if you raise your hand too, we can, allow you to use your mic, and you don't have to type in the question. Alright. So one piece of the conversation, right, is okay. What about in the instance that you don't use synced estimates? Less of a collision point. Right? Like, that's that's what we're worried about when it comes to recoding an estimate when there's also synced estimates. Right? Correct. So if we don't use synced estimates, then the the roadblock that we're running into is not an issue for you at all. It's It's just recoding an estimate, and then you're you're done. So in that in that way, not a big deal at all. For those of you that do archive and sync, I'm looking for how we want to handle that, moving forward. If it's something you don't necessarily know right now, I'll post it I'll post a question in the community, so that we can get additional feedback after the fact, or after this webinar to see how others and then, if you're more comfortable there, you can chime in as well. Alright. Moving on. Estimate file size limitation for archiving. So this is something that's come up the last two years. We have a few select users that attach a plethora of files, whether they be plans, documentations, specs, quotes, letters from vendors, anything to their estimate. And when you attach PDFs, Word docs, plan schematics, take off files, something to that nature to an estimate, your estimate can quickly grow. Right now, to archive an estimate, we have a file size limitation of two hundred megabytes. The the ask is basically to expand that file size limitation for archiving. So that's definitely something we are investigating. One of the things that we're talking about in the next upcoming year is utilizing, a storage drive solution where instead of attaching the instead of putting your attachments directly within the estimate, they're stored to a drive location linked back to your estimate. And whenever you wanna access those files, it makes a call to that drive solution. That would essentially negate this issue entirely. Would that be an acceptable solution for any of the folks that might run into that file size limitation? I'm gonna give it just a minute, see if, anyone chimes in, give everybody a a chance to type out whatever message they might want. Right. Going ahead moving forward. And, again, I'll post that question in the community, see if anyone has any feedback once they see something from somebody else. Okay. So we would probably store the files on a network drive, and the file structure could be changed outside of HDSS. It would probably lose the link to those files. So one of the things that we could probably also investigate is to see if it's possible to essentially just create a link to those files. Now we have the ability to basically store the backups where they're or store the files where they're not backed up with the estimate, but this would just essentially create a link to that. This would also negate that. So that's something that we can investigate if folks would rather see it stored locally on a network share, but that might present its own own host of issues depending on how someone's network is currently configured. Would folks find that something that we wanna investigate? Storing the files locally on a on a network share and having a link to the location of those files versus storing them within the estimate or storing them on a drive on a drive solution? K. Alright. Moving on to the next, next item is solicitations. So currently, when we send a solicitation, we send them one at a time. So what that means is that if I have a vendor that I'm sending a solicitation letter to, it sends one letter to that one, vendor, and then it creates another email that it sends to the next vendor with the new letter. And then for the third, again, a third email to that third vendor, with a new letter. The question I have for the group or let me let me step back. For anyone who sends solicitations and they send thirty or forty or more solicitations per estimate to multiple vendors asking for quotes, if I'm sending thirty to forty of those, it can take quite a bit of time to generate those emails and send them out. So the idea was brought up to do a bulk solicitation. So instead of creating thirty or forty emails, create one email with one attachment, and all of your contacts are BCC'd on that email. The question I have for everyone, would anyone find that beneficial, or is that an avenue that we, is that an avenue we should move forward on investigating, or is that something that you would not make use of? Okay. I've got one, one question or I've got one response with yes. Okay. Yes. That is the one reason I don't use this feature. Okay. So two responses for a yes. So creating one email and basically just sending it to, say, thirty or forty people within that one email where your vendors don't necessarily see everybody, but they still get the letter. Okay. So I've got a couple more here with yes and yes. Okay. Perfect. So that is something that we will investigate. Does anyone have anything else that they might want to see in regards to the sending of the solicitation that we don't, that we don't already do, especially when it comes to bulk sending of solicitations or how we generate the emails out? Would also like to have a a template slash mail merge for the email body. Okay. So basically be able to save the mail body as a template versus having to key it in every time. Okay. Is there an HTSS email list for contractors of subs in an area we can sign up for and use? So we do not, personally have a list of contractors. However, we did, begin a partnership, with Pipeline Suite that will help in this endeavor. Basically, they they work with surrounding areas to help get those list of list of vendors that you might not currently have. Okay. So opt in to okay. HCSS proposal list. Okay. Yeah. Nick, I'll follow-up after after this webinar. I'll shoot you an email with some information on pipeline suite, and we'll see if that, gets you on the right track. Alright. Moving forward here. Next question is opening an estimate from Precon. So this is something we've talked about internally, and it's something that we got a couple requests on from UGM. And that is within precon, if you have an estimate attached to a project, being able to open that estimate from precon. And what I mean by that is not opening up the estimate within precon itself, but basically opening up heavy bid and opening up that estimate. Is that something that you would find useful? And would you want the users that are using precon to have access to do that? Granted, if you have user setups and active directory turned on, they'll still need a login to HeavyBid, but, it's basically to see, would you find that useful, and would you allow your users to make use of it? K. I'm not seeing any new questions come in for that one. Again, I'll post it in the community, and we can, continue the conversation there. Alright. The next one we got was automatic archiving of estimates. So we have the ability to automatically sync estimates. Syncing of an estimate allows the estimate to stay within your heavy bid system, but we automatically sync estimates based on two factors right now, whenever the estimate is closed and whenever bid summary, is run. Archiving of estimates is a little bit trickier because not only does it make a backup of the estimate, but it also removes it from your local estimate list. So it's a great way to essentially manage your open estimate list and manage your storage on your local environment. The request we got was, how can we, automatically manage that? The request is to base it on the estimate tag. So based on a year or base it on something along the nature of the bid date. I think that that is a a great thing to look into. But before we did, I wanted to see if there were other driving factors that someone would find useful in how to or what they would use to trigger an automatic archival of estimates. Are there flags within the estimate that you would want the automatic archiving feature to utilize in order to tell when an estimate is ready to be archived. So, again, the first ones we're looking at are the estimate tags and then, specific fields such as, bid date. Out of curiosity, if I can, pop in a question for those of y'all who you've got access to it and can do so. Can you use the raise your hand feature, and let us if you use estimate history so are you or if you're archiving or syncing estimates at all, can you raise your hand? Alright. So that helps. Right? Because now you know, Aaron, you're asking those three people. Yep. So those couple that did raise your hand, would you find this useful? Would this be something that you would make use of in your system? K. So if I wanted to, it would be by the year, the year it was bid. Okay. Okay. So by year. Okay. Okay. So if we set it up to say if the bid date is older than this date automatically archive, if, you know, archive any estimate who has tag value one, which equals this if we manage our estimate list by our tag values, Would that be sufficient? Okay. Okay. Perfect. Alright. Display resources already used in the estimate. So this is something that I wanted to ask simply because I asked this in the in the community, and I got more of a confused response. So I don't think I explained it very clearly. I've got this response on the ideas portal as well as at UGM. The idea is that when I'm selecting resources in an estimate, I want to be able to filter down to only show, resources that are already being used in the estimate. So I'm gonna, change back to heavy bid here. And the idea is that whenever I am in a bid, when I'm going to select my resources and I bring up my select resources screen, I have my local labor, my local equipment, my system, codebook or my local or my system wide material codebook as well as my local material. This local list shows me every material that is currently in my local setup. The request is to filter this list down even further to only show the materials that are already being used in the estimate. Is this something that you would find useful or that you would utilize, as you're building an estimate? I'll give everybody a chance to respond here. The biggest use case I've heard for this kind of thing has just has been, again, just that protection, right, from accidentally fat fingering something and using two materials that are in your code book right next to each other, and accidentally putting one on one bid item and another on another bid item. So that's what I've heard so far as far as the use case is concerned. I'm not sure if there are others. Okay. So this would be helpful simply because I might have two materials in my local list that are similar. One that I've used, one that I haven't, and I wanna be able to filter down to the one that I have used. So I'm using the same material versus a similar material. Alright. Perfect. Does anyone else have any feedback one way or the other on this particular topic? And I'm not seeing anything else come come in. Let's change back. Alright. Automatically update the quote system. So this request came in from UGM, and it's almost a one eighty from something we have historically done in the quote system, which is why I'm almost I'm hesitant to implement it, but I wanted to get feedback before I made a decision. The question is whenever I go into the quote system, whether it's accessing the quote summary or accessing the quote tree, I want the estimate has changed to automatically run. That means quantity changes. That means new resources being added to my estimate without me seeing it before the change is committed. I just want it done. Is that something that anybody here would find useful or would want to to happen in their estimates? Okay. Alright. Steven, is that in, is that yes. Is that in regards to the quote system, or is that in regards to the previous request? Okay. Okay. So I'm getting a few responses. Okay. So for quantity changes only, if new resources are added, then I would want to review first. Okay. So if this is some if this is something that we do, end up implementing, it's something that we would probably want to break down, into a dual preference. You know, whether or not we want new items added automatically, or do we want just, quantity changes, or if we want it being done at all. I know that's a major departure from what we have historically done, especially when it comes to the quote system. So Sorry. I just dropped my water, everybody. No harm done. Alright. Okay. Any other feedback on this particular item, before I move on? Alright. Now the one I think everybody's been waiting for, open ended questions. So the idea behind the open end questions is basically to bring up anything that you heard or wanna chat about, something that came up at UGM, or for whatever reason, you did not attend UGM to share a suggestion that you wanted to bring up, and we can discuss it here in the room. So I'll give everybody a few minutes, to chat. If for whatever reason you would rather raise your hand and talk, I can allow you to speak as well. Is there a way to archive estimates that have not been converted to the latest version? Yes. You should be able to do that now. Amanda, you wanna take that one, or just you want me to to chime in on it? No. You got it. I was just updating the the static. Yeah. So you should be able to archive more or less any any estimate that at least was created in Windows. Now a DOS estimate, that might be another story, but we I don't know that anyone's actually tried that. But if you've made it, say, in the last ten years, it should be able to be archived without any issue even if you haven't opened it up in the latest release. I know one of the things we commonly hear is how, Heavybit is perfect and, does not need any changes. So if that is the way y'all feel as well, that is okay. I like that because that means I'm out of a job. Everybody needs to have something done to it because that keeps me busy. Okay. When we go to delete multiple resources from a crew, it won't display all the resources in the crew. Can this be looked at? So just to make sure that I am on the same page, when we're going through and we're looking at we're looking at renumber change, resource codes and delete codes, is this what we're what we're looking at? Or where are we where are we trying to delete multiple resources? Okay. So I've got something here. Okay. So this delete multiple resources. Okay. Okay. So this is okay. So this is only going to show non crew resources. You wanna open this up to labor and equipment as well or if you're using material in the crew, something to that nature so that you can automatically modify the crew from here. Okay. Who else would find would find that useful? Again, you can use the raise hand feature for that if you'd like to vote on that idea. Okay. We do have a question that came in over chat. Not sure if you saw that one. Okay. Question is in the quote system, it would be nice if we could compare quotes based on multiple folders for vendors who quote them as a package. We'd like to compare the package quote to using multiple, vendors. So just to make sure that I'm understanding correctly, we want to be able to take, let's say, a vendor has a total package price, and that package consists of quotes from, let's say, three different folders. We wanna see them as a total and compare them against, say, a different combination of quotes from either one other vendor for that same package or multiple vendors for the those same three folders. Okay. So we can let me get into a bid that might actually have, some quote folders here. Okay. So we have a function in HeavyBid called quote folder combinations. Essentially, what it allows us to do is it allows us to build what's called a package. In this case, I can get a quote from any number of folders. I can use any number of folders for a comparison. And what I can do is if I have the same vendor in any of those folders, I can bring them in. I don't know if I do in this particular estimate, but if I did, I can get that same browser's vendor across all four of my folders, and then I see my grand total down here at the bottom. I can then compare that total against any combination of other vendors for those same four folders. From there, I can look at my totals, and I can make a decision based on that. So I can select whatever combo I want, and it's going to select the vendor for that, for those folders. I can also make adjustments for those combos if I want to in a plus or minus fashion so that I get, the same functionality I would within the quote folder just in an overarching scale. Would that resolve, what you're trying to do? Again, I apologize. I don't have an estimate set up to kinda go through a thorough walk through of that of that, function, but this basically allows you to do exactly what you're asking. Right. Is there a way to see DVE dollars slash percent through this screen? So we wanna see the we wanna see the the minority dollars. I don't believe we have that within this particular screen. We're just going to see the combo totals, and it's just it's plug or it yeah. It's it's either plug or quoted dollars plus whatever adjustment, not necessarily, minority goals. For that, we need to go over to the minority analysis. Can you review, this in detail, each item quoted? So this is more of a an overview. If I want to see any additional detail, then I can go ahead and I can go and jump into that particular quote folder to to see the details. Right here, all I'm doing is seeing my total quote for that folder. I still need to go into the folder to get into the granular details. Going back to the question on, DBE dollars, is that a capability to the best of your knowledge, Aaron? It is certainly a capability, because we attach the if the vendor is a qualifying minority, we can or, you know, DVE vendor, we can we basically just need to display it. I just don't think that question's ever been asked for this particular string. So Mhmm. That is definitely something we can investigate. Yeah. Is there anybody else in the room that would find that valuable, seeing the DBE information in this space? Okay. We have a a couple folks that raised their hand. I'm gonna let them talk one at a time. And No. They just they're voting. Raising their hand. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So we got a couple up, that were raising their hand and a couple in the chat. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, that's definitely something we can investigate. The data is there, so it'd just be basically adjusting the UI to make it so that you can see it. Alright. Does anyone else have anything that they want to want to discuss or have a question on? Alright. I'll give it another minute or two. But other than that, thank you all for attending. Again, just like any other webinar, this should be available on the help site here in about a week or so. I'm gonna hang back for another couple minutes. So if anyone has any additional questions, comments, anything they wanna bring up, I'm happy to answer them. I don't see any additional questions, and I see a few attendees dropping off. So I'm gonna go ahead. I'm gonna end the webinar. Again, thank you all for attending. We got some great feedback. I got a got feedback on some things that it wasn't even expecting, so that's just a bonus for me. Again, if anyone has any questions, they're not comfortable asking them here in this forum, you can give me a call shoot me an email or give me a call. My email is aaron, a a r o n, dot alshaus, a l l s h o u s e, at h c s s dot com. Alright. Have a great day, everybody.