UniPhi 12 - Advanced document search

The use of UniPhi for independent verification work is unique to off the shelf software. Independent verification of construction and infrastructure projects is in growing demand due to the increase in infrastructure spending in eastern Australia with governments utilising strong tax receipts generated from growing house prices and low interest rates to invest in new transport and other infrastructure.

UniPhi's issues, document template and custom list capability added to its OnSite mobile apps provides unlimited capacity to tailor the capture of audit information right there at the site of the audit . However, like many database driven structures, UniPhi provided great data capture capability but limited output capability. Listening to our end users, UniPhi 12 comes with an advanced search feature that means your search capability grows with the custom lists you create to conduct your audits.

There are two types of custom lists that UniPhi allows you to create and embed in documents; Checklists and single select drop downs. When a user enters advanced document search, if all templates have been selected, all custom lists that have been included in a template are dynamically displayed in the search screen. Selecting an option in the drop downs returns a list of all documents where that particular option has been selected. An example in the independent verification world would be all "Hold Point" surveillance's. If the user selects a template to filter on, then only the custom lists used in that template are shown.



This functionality has led to new template structures that have solved another problem in the UniPhi documents module. Using UniPhi to share and collaborate with drawings often meant the creation of various discipline templates that were the same as each other but were used to differentiate the discipline (e.g. Engineering versus Architectural drawings). Now the discipline can be selected as part of the document and advanced search can be used to list all the specific disciplines drawings. By reducing the number of templates, end user experience is improved and the simplicity of the system increased.



The advanced search feature has also improved the ability to utilise custom checklists. A user can find all documents where a specific checklist item was ticked by pasting the name of one checklist item into the free text search.

These new features dramatically increase a users ability to get the outputs they wish and have fed similar filtering capability in reports. Thanks to the OH2K team at AECOM for much of the input into this new feature. We love the fact that our clients will let us work with them to mutually benefit not just each other but the broader UniPhi community,

UniPhi 12 - Mail Merge

UniPhi has had a "Mail Merge"type functionality for some time now. We call the mail merge fields template variables. Template variables are queries on the UniPhi database that return text, tables, paragraphs etc into a rich text box that can then be rendered to PDF as a letter or report. The key use of template variables has been in the addressing of forms and populate of paragraphs of text with specific project information like budgets, due dates etc. This significantly reduces transpose errors when issuing consulting reports.

However, again due to the requirements of a new client, we have enhanced this feature to be able to generate numerous documents in a single merge. This new functionality draws on either a selected resource list of contracts list to insert dynamic information into one document per selected resource/contract as per the screenshot below:

Mail Merge Wizard Form

The end output is a single PDF with all relevant documents combined and ready to print as well as an individual PDF per contact. This functionality will greatly reduce the administration burden of property sales for developers come settlement time.

UniPhi 12 - Cost plan report generation

In my net present value post I mentioned how some of our early goals for developing the UniPhi software platform back in 2005 were put on hold by our success at selling into the construction industry and our need to support specific requirements of clients in this industry. Another factor that changed the focus of our product was the creation in 2004 of the templates system. Our systems architect +Murray Stiles showed his true genius when as a graduate software developer he came up with the idea and structure for UniPhi documents. What the UniPhi template system does is it enables end users to build their own PDF based reports that integrate text commentary with graphs, data tables, registers, uploaded files, version control, work flow for sign off and many many other factors.

Leveraging this functionality, and the adding of calculated cost metrics, benchmark reports and integration with cost estimating tools, cost managers can now generate cost plan reports on the fly. The reduction in time taken to transpose data from multiple sources into a consolidated report plus the elimination of transpose errors is a game change for cost managers. When combined with the template controls that unlock the data stored in the system, a cost manager can now offer significantly more value to these reports as time freed up is used to provide nuance commentary and analysis of the latest plan.

Some of the controls that unlock this value and are new or expanded in UniPhi 12 are:

• Benchmark
• Cost plan variance analysis
• Full cost plan output
• Cost plan graphs for elemental comparison between plans
• Template variables to provide sub elements of the plan throughout commentary'
• The ability for the end user to insert a template variable at document compile time.

We expect that customers using our software and maximising their capability in the areas listed above will truly define themselves as market leaders in their industry.

UniPhi 12 - Project Custom Fields

Business are constantly faced with two contradicting problems: 1) having too much information to analyse or 2) not having enough information to make a firm decision. The internet of things is rapidly removing problem number 2 and this is leading to problem number 1 being the main problem to solve.

In the first round of document and content management systems, meta data was tagged upon data capture. This has proven to be a cumbersome and time consuming exercise that has led to miscoding and hence the same end result of too much information and being unable to analyse it.

UniPhi's solution is to capture meta data at the project level once and then every time a new piece of information is added to this project, the meta data is automatically applied to it. The types of meta data that each business wants to capture is many and varied. To allow for this, UniPhi comes with the ability to categorise and create an unlimited number of project custom fields.

Project custom fields are classified as either being relevant for the entire duration of the project, or per financial period. The per financial period information is of most use for ongoing reporting purposes. An example of how this feature can be utilised is for including data in recurring reports such as project status reports, Project Control Group (PCG) reports, or statistical summary information. One of the nice things about the per financial period option is that UniPhi allows you to copy your information form the previous period. In effect this means that for a status or PCG report, the amount of effort required to update can be reduced through reuse of  information from the previous month. In addition, you will constantly have a reference to your historic data which is available via the periodic drop down list. If you want to know the status of your project in March of last year, simply select that month from the list, and you will find its status.

The flexibility that UniPhi offers when it comes to configuring your own deployment means the ways that you can use periodic custom fields is practically limitless. If your project involves building a section of road, your custom field can be structured to capture the progress made within that period. If your project needs to track safety incidents which have occurred, you can configure it to capture this information. You can even select a significant photo image and attach it to your project summary.

More importantly, once your valuable data has been captured within the custom fields, you will more than likely want to present it to your stakeholders. The way UniPhi enables you to do this is via documents, and more specifically via document template controls. There are numerous document controls that you can use to present UniPhi data in attractive document formats. In this case though we would be using the Periodic Custom Fields control. This control allows the document creator to display the periodic information in an output document. If its a text field, then it will appear as such in your document, if however your custom filed is a numeric value it will present as a table and display the number for this period, and a cumulative total amount.

The other type of project custom field is for data which is required for the "whole project". As you manage more projects over time, your goal will no doubt be to get better at managing them, and learning from prior experience is often the best way to do so. In the construction industry for example it should be entirely possible to know with a high degree of certainty how much a building will cost, and how many widgets will be required, and when they will need to be purchased.

As per this recent blog, we have enabled you to draw on your cost data from closed projects in order to create an accurate benchmarked cash flow. In that blog I explained the concept of applying additional filters to the benchmark data that was displayed, and as a follow up, I'll describe below how you can actually do that.

Remaining in the construction industry for a moment, let's suppose that across your entire portfolio of projects, you know and want to capture specific information against each build. A common category of information that would assist in understanding your project specifics is Building Areas. Typical metrics captured within building areas are things like FECA (Fully Enclosed Covered Area), GFA (Gross Floor Area), NLA (Net Lettable Area), etc. Another example of the category of information that will be required is Functional Units. The type of information captured within Functional Units will be distinct units which have a numerical value such as number of floors, number of units, or number of lifts. Typically these fields retain a constant value throughout the life of the project.

This unique feature, and the way that you would leverage the information captured within your projects is for comparative and benchmark purposes. Relating back to our cash flow benchmarking post; having this data available across your portfolio, means that each time you kick off a new project, you can conduct benchmark comparisons to validate the assumptions, and financial information that has been used.  UniPhi unlocks this information for you via several Benchmark reports. In the example below, we can observe a line of best fit for all of the projects that match our specific requirements. And, those requirements have been defined and configured by the administrator within the organisation. Once again, capturing the whole of project meta data once then allows you to aggregate any other numerical piece of information by this whole of project field across your portfolio.