Checklist Upgrade Guide

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Checklist Upgrade Overview

This article is a summary of the upcoming checklist changes. As a result of these changes, checklist sections will be removed, and existing sections will be converted to individual checklists, i.e. a checklist with three sections will become three separate checklists. The list view will gain new functionality through targeted batch actions and the addition of group pages. To prevent the interruption of ongoing work, this conversion will be optional for existing accounts and projects.

Example

To illustrate the impact of these changes we will reference two checklists - AHU-1 and AHU-2, each with a Mechanical, Electrical, and Controls section - as an example.

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Checklist Upgrade Video Walkthrough

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Upgrading Your Account

Before any projects in your account, new or existing, can be eligible for the new checklists you must first upgrade your account. When you upgrade your account all of your account-level checklist templates will be converted to not have sections. Your account will not automatically upgrade when this update is released. When you are ready to move your account to the new checklist system, you can click a button under Account Settings to upgrade the account.

The upgrade will make the following changes:

  • Checklist template sections will be converted into checklist templates. The name of each new checklist template will be a combination of the section name with the checklist template name. For checklist templates with only one section where the section name is one of a few defaults ("Main", "First"), the new checklist template name will be the same as the old checklist template name and will not include the section name.
  • The "Batch Add", "Copy to Account", and "Copy from Account" functions in existing projects will change to handle the absence of sections in your account templates.
  • Any new project you create will use the new checklists.
Example

Checklist template "Air Handling Unit" with sections "Mechanical", "Electrical", and "Controls" will be converted into three new checklist templates: "Air Handling Unit - Mechanical", "Air Handling Unit - Electrical", and "Air Handling Unit - Controls".

Checklist template "Chiller" with one section, "Main", will be converted into one new checklist named "Chiller".

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Upgrading Existing Projects

Your projects will not automatically upgrade when this update is released. Instead, you will have the option to transition to the new checklists on a project-by-project basis. When you are ready to move to the new checklist system, you can click a button under Project Settings where you can initiate the upgrade for that project.

NOTE Your corporate account must be upgraded before any projects within your account can be upgraded.

The upgrade will make the following changes:

  • Checklist sections will be converted into checklists. The name of each new checklist will be a combination of the section name with the checklist name. For checklists with only one section where the section name is one of a few defaults ("Main", "First"), the new checklist name will be the same as the old checklist name and will not include the section name.
  • The number of each new checklist will be a combination of the number of the old checklist and the checklist section number. For checklists with only one section, the new checklist number will be the same as the old checklist number.
  • Issues associated with the overall checklist (not to a specific line) when the checklist has multiple sections will be reconnected to one of the resulting new checklists. An effort will be made to connect the issue intelligently by first comparing the assignment of the issue with the assignments of the new checklists, then by comparing the discipline of the issue with the names of the new checklists. When no best guess can be made, the issues will be connected to the new checklist converted from the first section of the old checklist.
  • Files associated with the overall checklist (not to a specific line) when the checklist has multiple sections will be duplicated. Each new checklist created from the old checklist will have the same set of these associated files.
  • If you are watching a checklist with multiple sections, after the conversion you will be watching all the new checklists created from the old checklist.
Example

Checklist AHU-1 with sections "Mechanical", "Electrical", "Controls" will be converted into three new checklists: "AHU-1 - Mechanical", "AHU-1 - Electrical", and "AHU-1 - Controls". The same conversion will happen for checklist AHU-2.

Checklist "CH-1" with one section, "Main", will be converted into one new checklist named "CH-1".

An issue associated with checklist AHU-1, assigned to "Mechanical Contractor", will be associated to the new checklist "AHU-1 - Mechanical" because it is also assigned to "Mechanical Contractor".

A file (nameplate.jpg) associated to checklist AHU-1 will be duplicated and can be found on each of the three new checklists created from "AHU-1".

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Changes to Existing Projects

After you upgrade your account, account checklist templates will not have sections. In order to accommodate this change in non-upgraded projects that still have checklist sections, three changes will be made to existing functionality:

  • Non-upgraded projects will no longer be able to select an account template when batching. Only project templates will be available.
  • The "Copy from Account" function will work differently. Rather than selecting a single template to copy into the project, you will be able to select multiple account templates. A single project template will be created, with each account template you selected added as a section.
  • The "Copy to Account" function will not be available.

These changes are designed to allow you to leverage your account templates in non-upgraded projects.

Example

Previously you would select the "Air Handling Unit" account template during the "Batch Add" process. After upgrading you will create an "Air Handling Unit" template in the project through the "Copy from Account" function. You will then select that project template during the "Batch Add" process.

Previously you would copy in account template "Air Handling Unit" with its three sections "Mechanical", "Electrical", and "Controls" by clicking "Copy from Account" and then selecting the "Air Handling Unit" template. After your account is upgraded that account template will be converted into three separate templates, "Air Handling Unit - Mechanical", "Air Handling Unit - Electrical", and "Air Handling Unit - Controls". To get the equivalent result in a non-upgraded project you will click "Copy from Account" and select each of the three templates, then click "Copy". A single project-level template will be created with three sections, "Air Handling Unit - Mechanical", "Air Handling Unit - Electrical", and "Air Handling Unit - Controls".

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Upgraded Projects - List View

After the upgrade, you will find what used to be your individual checklist sections listed as separate checklists in the list view. As a result of this, you will no longer see "Multiple Statuses" as the status of an item in the list, as each entry in the list has only a single status associated with it.

Example

Previously you would see two entries, "AHU-1" and "AHU-2", in the list for your two checklists. You will now see six entries:

  • "AHU-1 - Mechanical"
  • "AHU-1 - Electrical"
  • "AHU-1 - Controls"
  • "AHU-2 - Mechanical"
  • "AHU-2 - Electrical"
  • "AHU-2 - Controls"

To create a PDF of only the Mechanical checklists you would select those two in the list and then click "PDF". Previously it was not possible to create a PDF that only showed the Mechanical sections.

Because of this change, you'll be able to perform batch actions that you previously couldn't. With the previous system, batch assigning a checklist requires that you reassign all of its sections and batch changing its status requires that you set the same status on all of its sections. With the new system, you will be able to perform batch actions more selectively since those checklists won't be forcibly tied together. Other actions, like creating a PDF for a set of checklists, will also be more effective as you can now include only the specific content you want.

Example

Previously, to reassign the "Mechanical" portion of checklist "AHU-1" and "AHU-2", you would navigate into each checklist and reassign the "Mechanical" section. With the new system, you will be able to select only the mechanical checklists - "AHU-1 - Mechanical" and "AHU-2 - Mechanical" - and reassign them in one action without affecting the Electrical and Control checklists.

The list view also receives a new button, "Open Group" (the exact wording may change). This button appears when filters are applied or when sorting with a "grouped sort". A "grouped sort" is any sort that segregates the list into categories based on your sort. For example, sorting by status will create dividers in the list denoting the point at which the list switches to the next status.

The new button will allow you to view the "group page" for a set of filtered checklists or for the checklists in a sort group. Group pages allow you to view the contents of multiple checklists together on one page. This replicates some of the functionality that was previously available with sections. You can read more about group pages below.

Finally, to ease the transition the sort options and default sort will change. What was previously the "Asset" sort will be renamed to "Asset Type", and a new "Asset" sort will be added that sorts based on the associated asset of each checklist.

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Upgraded Projects - Detail View

The detail view becomes simpler with this change. The detail view shows the lines of what was previously a single checklist section. Because there are no longer multiple sections, actions for reassigning, changing status, editing, and deleting move into the title area of the checklist.

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Upgraded Projects - Group Pages

The upgrade will introduce Group Pages. A group page allows you to view multiple checklists and their lines on a single page. You can answer lines, change statuses, and create a PDF from a group page. Group pages will be accessible in two ways: 

  • When you filter the list, a button will appear above the list next to the "Clear Filters" button.
  • When a sort is applied to the list view, a button will appear underneath each group header.

In both cases, the resulting group page when you click the button will include all the relevant checklists: either all the checklists that match your filters or all the checklists that belong to the sort group.

Example

Previously, you would click on AHU-1 to see a page containing its three sections: "Mechanical", "Electrical", and "Controls". Under the new system, you would instead sort the checklists by "Asset", then click on the "Open Group" button in the "AHU-1" sort header to view those same checklists on a single page. Alternatively, you could filter the list to equipment "AHU-1", then click the "Open Group" button at the top of the page.

NOTE Initially, group pages will only be available for groups of 50 checklists or less. We will work to raise or eliminate this limit in future updates.

Group pages were inspired by our desire to maintain the aspects of checklist sections that customers liked without actually having checklist sections. As we've built group pages we've realized that they do a lot more than just serve as substitutes for a checklist with multiple sections. Because a group page can include any set of checklists, it is far more flexible than checklist sections ever were. It opens up many new uses:

  • Send a link to a contractor containing a set of their assigned checklists, ready to be filled out.
  • Quickly scan a set of "In Progress" checklists to see if a specific line has been answered on each of them.
  • Print a PDF of all "Not Started", "Mechanical" checklists without extra page breaks or headers between checklists.

We also realized that some of our customers either never used multiple sections, or used them then abandoned them because of the associated challenges. They avoided the problems of multiple sections, but they never saw the benefits either. Now they can get the benefits for the first time.

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Upgraded Projects - Batch Add

The process for batch creating checklists will change as well. Upgraded projects will allow you to select not only multiple assets, but multiple templates as well.

With the previous system, you can take a single template with three sections and apply it to multiple equipment, creating multiple checklists that each have three sections. If we did not update the "Batch Add" function you would have to go through the batch process three times (once for each section) to get to the same end result in an upgraded project. To avoid that, we are adding the selection of multiple templates in upgraded projects.

Example

Previously, to create checklists for AHU-1 and AHU-2, you would select your Air Handling Unit template (with its accompanying three sections) and then select equipment AHU-1 and AHU-2. The result would be two new checklists with three sections each. Under the new system you will first select equipment AHU-1 and AHU-2, then select the three templates you want to apply to each equipment ("Air Handling Unit - Mechanical", "Air Handling Unit - Electrical", "Air Handling Unit - Controls"). The result will be six new checklists.

The batch process in upgraded projects will feature a few other improvements:

  • The steps will be reordered so that you first select the assets you want to create checklists for, then you select the templates.
  • You will be able to customize the name of the created checklists as part of the batch process.

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Upgraded Projects - Templates

When you upgrade your project all of your project's checklist templates will be converted to not have sections. If you previously have a checklist template with two sections, the new system will convert it into two templates. You can then select both templates when batch adding to achieve the same effect.

The upgrade will make the following changes:

  • Checklist template sections will be converted into checklist templates. The name of each new checklist template will be a combination of the section name with the checklist template name. For checklist templates with only one section where the section name is one of a few defaults ("Main", "First"), the new checklist template name will not include the section name.
  • The "Copy from Account" function will allow the selection of multiple templates.
Example

Checklist template "Air Handling Unit" with sections "Mechanical", "Electrical", and "Controls" will be converted into three new checklist templates: "Air Handling Unit - Mechanical", "Air Handling Unit - Electrical", and "Air Handling Unit - Controls".

Checklist template "Chiller" with one section, "Main", will be converted into one new checklist named "Chiller".

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iOS App

Our iOS app ( http://www.cxalloy.com/tq/ios) will be updated to handle upgraded projects. If you are using an old version of the iOS app you will be prompted to update the app before you can sync with an upgraded account or project.

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