Object History

Through Object History, ProjectVillage™ provides an audit trail, automatically documenting the handling of documents by users in the normal course of using the application. For any object, its history of use is available by simply clicking the Object History toolbar icon.

Object History is a body of data that is tracked on every object (a document or an item from a document. For instance, a Subcontract is an object as well as one of its Change Orders, or one of its Change Orders' Clauses). 

Whenever a user views, modifies, deletes, sends or prints an object, a trace record linked to the object is added to Object History including the user's id, date, time, action, etc. While view, modify, delete, send and print are typical events that are traced, an object can trigger any event. Because of this, many objects trace actions taken on them that are totally unique.

When an object is deleted, the body of Object History stored for it is not. Because of this, although the application does not save deleted data, it does retain information about the data and who deleted it.

Attachments

The ProjectVillage™ engine provides the functionality for users to assemble a list of objects (documents or other items from them) and link those objects to any other object. This is presented in the interface as "attaching" objects to each other, using the familiar metaphor of attaching files to email.

The list that users assemble is presented as the "attachment basket", similar to the familiar "shopping cart" on e-commerce sites. In this way, as users navigate from module to module, project to project, objects can be "picked up" as they go, and "dropped" onto other objects to create a reference between them.

Comments

Each object supports any number of comments posted by users in a nested, newsgroup style hierarchy. Effectively, every document becomes a potential topic for discussion. A user's ability to comment on an object is determined by the Comment permission, which can be granted or revoked in the Security Groups module.

The Inbox

The Inbox is a special module that lists, for each user, all of the objects of any type and from any project that are tagged to that user in workflow. In ProjectVillage™ an object tagged to a user is referred to as being "in that user's court". Inbox contents can be filtered by object type or project. In addition, the Inbox lists Project Messages sent to the user.

Modeled after familiar email clients such as Microsoft's Outlook or Novell's GroupWise, the Inbox also has views for Sent Items and Trash.

Project Messages

Project Messages are like email with fields for To, CC, BC, a Subject and a Body. Project Messages provide a means for free form communication outside the structure of formal documents and workflow. 

The Project Message icon appears on all toolbars, allowing users to create a message from anywhere in the application. When a Project Message is created anywhere other than an Inbox (for instance, from a listing of Drawing Revisions or Redlines), the selected object automatically becomes an attachment to the new Project Message. This allows users to bring attention to issues and documents by quickly "picking them up" and sending them to another user's Inbox outside of the formal workflow process.

Project Messages are used primarily as messaging internal to ProjectVillage™ and generally appear only in a user's ProjectVillage™ Inbox. However, a user can choose to have ProjectVillage™ send Project Messages as standard, external email as well.

The Navigator

Besides serving as a navigational tool, the Navigator is the best visual representation of the Enterprise Community™™ model. On a single screen, a user can see every module from every Member Company for which he or she has been given at least the "read" permission. Each module in the listing is a link that takes the user to that module, in that project, from that member company.

Maps

MapQuest technology is tightly integrated to provide interactive maps, with a single click, wherever an address appears in ProjectVillage™.