Designed specifically for the AEC industry, the Specifications Analyst helps to expedite the project specification review process. By proactively parsing the specification files for quicker navigation, as well as extracting key pieces of information such as submittals, products, and warranties, the Specifications Analyst helps to improve efficiency and reduce the risk of oversight.
The Specifications Analyst is available as part of the Project Control Add-on.
Selecting Specification Files
While creating a Project in Egnyte, users will have the option to select their specification files as part of the Project setup. From the Files step in the Project creation wizard, users can select the Add file(s) option under Project specifications.
This will allow users to select files for upload from their local computer.
If specification selection is skipped at the time of Project setup, users can select their specification files at a later time in a few different ways.
- After navigating to the Project Dashboard, scroll to the Specification files widget. From this widget, a user can select Add file(s) if no files have been selected yet.
This will open a file picker where users can select from files that have already been uploaded to the respective Project in Egnyte. -
If a specification file already has been selected but the user wants to add additional files, select the three-dot icon on the widget, and then Add specification file(s).
Similar to the option above, this will open a file picker where users can select from files that have already been uploaded to the respective Project in Egnyte. This same entry point from the widget can be used at a later time to Unmark specification file(s) after at least one file has been selected.
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Another location from which specification selection can be done is from the Project Settings. To navigate to the Project settings, click on three-dot icon in the navigation bar and then Project Settings.
After opening the Project Settings dialog, select the Files tab and then the Add file(s) option under the Project specifications (optional) section.
This too will open the Egnyte file picker.
Users can navigate back to the Project Settings at any time to modify their selection of specification files for a given Project.
Regardless of which selection method is used, up to 10 individual PDF files less than 100MB each can be selected and files must be in 6-digit CSI MasterFormat for the extraction to work properly.
Specification Files Widget
After the specification files have been selected there will be a short processing time. The widget will show a notification informing the user that files are still being processed and are not yet represented in the widget.
Once processing is complete, while the files remain unchanged, Egnyte will automatically parse the specification data by Division.
Users can select the dropdown in the widget to select a Division, which will update the reflected values for Submittals, Products, and Warranties specific to that Division.
Each value shown in the widget is clickable and will navigate a user to the corresponding view in file preview. For example, if 15 Products is selected from the screenshot above, a user will be taken to Division 01 - General Requirements in the corresponding specification file in preview, with the products filter applied.
File Preview
The widget is not the only entry point to view the specification data. A user can open the file directly from the file listing and still receive the same specification view.
While in file preview, additional filters can be applied including Table of contents which will allow a user to select a specification section and jump directly to it in the document. The corresponding section will be highlighted in the file preview.
If selected, the Materials filter will list each instance where the material keyword is found throughout the document.
An Export option is also available from the upper right-hand corner of file preview, which will allow to export the content that is currently shown on the left-hand panel.
If a filter or search is applied, only the content that matches the filter or search criteria will be included in the export.
Additional Details
Each time a specification file is selected as part of the Project creation process or afterwards, the file will be tagged as Specifications. This makes it easier to search for specification files throughout the domain, but also to initiate metadata driven workflows.