“BuildIT Vets” know that our size and structure allows us to be agile, responsive, and economical for our customers. And that feedback from our users is highly valued at BuildIT – often directly driving improvements and core development. Our overall objectives – organizing, scheduling, and communicating – guides our team, and our priorities.
We are pleased to introduce that our latest version is available now and extends our toolset – making BuildIT more powerful, more rewarding, and more profitable for our users.
Scheduling – new Gantt “power bar”
Most BuildIT users create and update their schedule using the Gantt view (sometimes called a bar chart or construction timeline view).
With the new Gantt “power bar”, launched by clicking the 
button below the task name (and to the right of the # of working days), you can quickly make changes to that particular task:
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Increase or decrease the duration of the task
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Move the task forward or back by a day or a full week
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Toggle the highlight of the task
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Delete the task
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Add contacts to the task
You’ll see the changes immediately upon clicking the buttons - no need to wait for the entire screen to refresh, nor do you need to open the entire task up. This will shave minutes off your scheduling daily, which adds up to hours saved at the end of the month.
PDF “super docs”
PDF (or Adobe) documents have become an industry standard. Contractors recognize that documentation is a big deal – it shows your professionalism and covers your butt, but proper documentation can be a pain in the butt to create. It’s also one of the top reasons BuildIT customers subscribe to our service: we help our users create, store, share and send documents.
We are introducing a full range of cleanly formatted industry standard PDF document templates – or “super docs" – and more are on the way!
Super docs simply look better – much easier on the eyes – they work better too. They have your letterhead (automatically generated or fully customized). They can be saved in BuildIT or on your computer, and emailed to your contacts (either locked or editable).
Need a custom super doc? No problem: we help our customers create custom documents for their exclusive use – just email us your favorites (if you don’t already see what you need in the list of available templates) and we’ll get back to you.
In BuildIT simply click [Create New] > [Document]. Then look for the templates that have «PDF» to the right of their name, or simply uncheck the “text templates” and you’ll see just the super docs (more are being added all the time).
Some other new features since our last update:
1. Creating a new contact from an email – notice the new icon 
next to an email address in an inbound email? Click on it, and launch a new contact edit window, with that email address already filled in. Just enter additional contact details and save.
2. To do’s – they can now be moved to, or copied to, a different job. Use the yellow “do this” drop down menu for this feature.
3. Favorites – you can now add a favorite in your “files” tab – just click on the 
button and type in or copy your link in the appropriate field. Create a link to a website and share that to your users, contacts, and by email.
4. Calendar view on "schedule" tab - you can now view your tasks in a more familiar format.
5. Email "read/unread" toggle - are your unread emails piling up, but you still wish to keep them on the system? Or have you viewed an email but wish to keep that hot potato hot by having it display as "unread"? Then use the new "do this" control to set checked emails to read/unread.
6. We've added some more user account types - employee access accounts that are "email only", customer access accounts that can only view detail on ONE job. These user accounts are offered at discounted rates and may address some situations in your company where you want to restrict access to information but still keep key people "in the loop".
7. Have you checked your preferences? We’ve added a bunch of new options in the last few months. Have a look around to see if BuildIT is optimally configured to the way you work.
8. Infrastructure – you’ve come to expect that when you log into BuildIT, it works… every time. To make that possible, we are constantly upgrading hardware and software components at our hosting facility. We’ve been known to do some heroic things at wee hours of the morning, so that when you log in the following morning, you are greeted by the login screen… and you get in. That’s a major benefit to a hosted service – we take care of the hardware requirements, you just use the system, knowing that you’re always working off the most up-to-date version.
Scott Hutchinson
scott@builditsystems.com
1 866 585 5050 ext 1