PlanWell Enterprise: Workflow
- What goes where?
- Setting up the planroom
- Using the planroom
- Maintaining the planroom
- Archiving the project
Workflow Details
What goes where?
PlanWell Enterprise is hosted by your local reprographer and supported by the PlanWell Data Center in California’s Silicon Valley. Printable files are maintained on a server at the reprographer, along with the database of all the project drawings. The Website itself is hosted at the Data Center, which has the equipment, infrastructure and security to support the enormous volume of Web transactions that take place with Enterprise every day. The Data Center also synchronizes with the local reprographer every few minutes to maintain a copy of every project’s drawing database. Finally, the Data Center also is host to the small images of the drawings that are viewed over the Web.
Setting up the planroom.
After your planroom has been established by your local reprographer, your drawings are scanned from hardcopy or converted from electronic files to unalterable image files. These image files are stored on the reprographer’s server. A small “thumbnail” image of the drawing is simultaneously created for viewing over the Web and is sent to the Web servers at the Data Center. As the drawing is scanned, a record is entered into the database for each drawing, and the scan or conversion is checked for its print quality, rotation, proper size, naming convention and proper placement in the directory. At this point – usually no more than a few hours after submitting your plans and specs – your planroom is up and available for use on the Web.
Using the planroom.
Users enter the planroom by coming directly to the site on the Web, from a link on the reprographer’s site. Once there, users can call up the drawings they need, review them with the plan viewer, apply the e-commerce features to order the drawings, and the local reprographer prints and delivers the order.
Maintaining the planroom
As new drawings are issued or existing drawings are changed, your reprographer posts the prints or files to the site in their appropriate directories – the moment they are posted, they are available for viewing and ordering over the Web. Files are never overwritten without the content provider’s explicit instructions. As changes are made, you can set up a notification window to tell users about important project changes, job information or additions to the planroom when they log into the planroom. Using your address book, you can even broadcast email team members to make communication even faster and more direct. At any time, content providers can check the planholders list to find out who has received which documents and when. Reports on the documents themselves can also be generated to determine when documents were posted and if the document collection is complete.
Archiving the project
If each document is posted to the planroom as it is issued, the project archive has been built as the project progressed. After construction is complete, the documents can be preserved in their “planroom” state for facilities management purposes, or the images can be burned onto CDs and stored offline. CD’s can be burned with a variety of ordering and administration functions, depending on the needs of the client. With PlanWell Enterprise, there’s no more assembling the archive after the project is complete, organizing and storing the paper drawings, or digging through what drawings you have to track down the one drawing needed for that critical question that the tenant has. No matter how long it’s been, simply log onto PlanWell Enterprise or insert your archive CD and view or order the plans you need.