December 2022 Release Notes

The Kahua 2022.8 release will be deployed to our Production environments on December 17, 2022. A preview of this functionality can be accessed at https://earlyaccesslaunch.kahua.com beginning on December 3, 2022. Please click here for more information on the Early Access program. The release notes below are subject to change. For any changes to these notes, please see the change log at the bottom of the article.

In addition to various performance improvements, user interface updates and error corrections, this release will also include:

Domain Settings

Option to Exclude New Users from 'Domain User' Group

Some organizations have strict security controls and do not want all users to be automatically added to the ‘Domain User’ group since when new apps are introduced, they typically default to Contributor permission.  A new Domain Setting has been introduced to prevent new users from being automatically added to the ‘Domain User’ group.

Note All new and existing domains shall continue to add new users to ‘Domain User’ group by default unless this setting is enabled.

Configuration

Quick Open

When right-clicking on an app from the app bar, the 'Configure' action will now navigate directly to the app within Configuration.

Updates to List Views

When creating a new view, default scope is now Just Me. User can change the scope from Just Me to Everyone at any point after creating the view.

Admins can see ALL views created against a List and take the following additional actions

  • Delete any view, including views users set to Just Me

  • Change scope of a view someone else created to Everyone or back to Just Me (the person who created it)

Updates to Visual Workflow

Ability to view past and current steps of an Approval flow within the document workflow.

To make more readable

  • Show Start Step

  • Remove redundant listing of steps

  • Remove seconds from timestamp

Tasks

Automatic Delegation While Out of Office

Tasks can now be automatically delegated while you are out of the office. To enable automatic task delegation, open My Settings to the Out of Office tab. Choose the date range and who should receive your incoming tasks.  The “Delegate To” user list is based on the list of valid users for the current domain. 

This setting will be applied to newly received tasks once enabled.  Any existing tasks will not be delegated when the setting is turned on.  When the setting is manually disabled or has expired, any task that was delegated while out of office will remain in the delegated state.

Out of Office Setting

Administrators can also enable a user’s out of office from the Users App. 

Users App:

Project Documents Calendar (Version 1)

Users can create Project Documents Calendars that show documents by date, such as due date. Setup and interaction are like Dashboards. Document types can be color-coded for easy scanning of the calendar. Results can also be filtered by common attributes.

Example Calendar:

Example Calendar Setup:

Permissions Explorer

Kahua has introduced a way to quickly understand permissions for specific users and folders in the File Manager app. To open the Permissions Explorer, right click on the File Manager app from the app bar, as indicated by the red rectangle below.  This will open a floating panel that displays all folders and individual users as well as the role that has been assigned.  Note that only direct users on the domain will be returned.  Contacts that are not domain users or users that access a folder via sharing are not displayed.  Use the filtering mechanism in the column headers to return results for specific criteria.  The results will display up to 50,000 rows on screen.Continue to filter to find the exact information you are looking for.  At any time, the data can be exported to CSV, which will include all of the filtered results up to 1,000,000 rows.  Additionally, in the event a change to the permissions is needed, users can navigate directly to a folder by clicking the icon in the far-left column.  Users will need to use the "Refresh" icon in the top right corner to refresh the results in the event any changes are made.  This functionality is limited to members of the Domain Admin group.

Permissions Explorer:

Process Operation Added to File Manager Roles

To broaden the ability to process File Manager documents into a Design Review, and to be more consistent with other Kahua base apps, the ‘Process’ operation has been added to the ‘Contributor’ and ‘Observer’ roles.   Previously this operation was only associated with the Administrator and Moderator roles.

Note This change applies only to organizations who use the base File Manager app without any extensions. Permissions will not be updated in any custom File Manager extensions, but can be included via kBuilder if this change is desired.

 

QR Code Column

A new QR Code column indicates if the location has been assigned a QR code. It will be empty if there isn’t one.

Custom Button Labels

Kahua approval workflows can now have custom labels in the buttons of the tasks that approvers receive.  By default the buttons will still be labeled “Approve”, “Decline”, and “Review Complete”, but these labels can now be overridden in the Configuration -> Approvals app.  Custom button labels apply to all the approval types except for DocuSign.

Additionally, when an approval sequence contains more than 1 approver, the button label for the Approve action can be set differently for all tasks up to the final approval task.  For instance, if there are 4 approvals in the sequence, the first 3 approval tasks can have the approval button labeled “Recommend” while the final approval task can have the approval button labeled “Approve”.

When custom buttons labels are enabled, all approval tasks for that approval workflow will reflect the custom labels including those tasks that are already in progress.  The custom button labels will also reflect accurately in the History and Visual Workflow such that the action taken by the approver displays the button label.  

Enable custom button labels in the Configuration -> Approvals app.

With the button labels configured as above, Approvers aside from the last approver will now see these buttons on the approval task.

The final approver will see these task buttons:

The custom button labels will also reflect accurately in the History and Visual Workflow such that the action taken by the approver displays the button label.

Revert to Prior Approver

Kahua approval workflows now allow for approval tasks to be reverted or returned to the prior approver for the purposes of asking clarifying questions, requesting additional information, or asking the approver to review and re-approve.  The ability to revert to prior approver is controlled by a setting for each configured approval workflow.  By default, the revert to prior approver feature is disabled, but can be enabled in the Configuration -> Approvals app.  When enabled all approvers except for the first approver in the sequence will see an additional button labeled Revert.  The label for the revert button can also be changed if the custom button labels feature is enabled.

Upon clicking the Revert button, the user is required to enter a comment which will be displayed in the task that the prior approver will receive.  When the approval task is reverted, the prior approver in the sequence will receive a new task, however their prior approval is not erased.  When the prior approver approves the task again, both the original and subsequent approval are captured.  Similarly, the History and Visual Workflow will reflect anytime a task is reverted and subsequently approved again.

When the revert to prior approver feature is enabled, all approval tasks for that approval workflow will now display the revert button including those tasks that are in already progress. 

Enable revert to prior approver in the Configuration -> Approvals app.

With the revert to prior approver feature enabled, the second approver in the sequence and beyond will see the Revert button.  When the Revert button is clicked, the user will be forced to enter a comment.

The prior approver will receive a new task with the other approver’s revert comment included.

History and Visual Workflow will reflect the revert action details.

Auto-Remove Group Members Based on Expiration Date

A new option has been added to the Project Directory app that will automatically remove a User’s access to a project by terminating all their Group Membership for that project as of a certain date.  It will act exactly as if the Remove action were manually invoked for each Group, but at the date specified:

Of course, if no Date is entered, the Project Directory and associated Group Membership shall continue to behave as has before the option became available.

Dynamic Stamps

Recently Kahua’s built-in Viewer/Markup Tool added the ability to upload and then apply Stamps.  This release extended this capability with the introduction of ‘Dynamic Stamps’.

Like before, ‘Dynamic Stamps’ can be uploaded and configured in the Configuration app:

However, ‘Dynamic Stamps’ differ from the ‘Simple Stamps’ in that they can be combined with meta data at the time the stamp is applied.  This is useful whether you simply want to append a stamp with the Reviewer’s Name and Date; or want to apply a stamp to a business process document, for example, by applying a company-specific Submittal Stamps to indicate the Reviewer’s assessment of Submittal documents.

All Stamps can be configured so that they are only available to specific Projects, Users, Groups or Companies.  This gives you a lot of control over who has access to which stamps and will prevent users from other companies from using your stamp.

Much more information on “Stamps” can be found in Kahua’s September 2022 Release Notes:

Updated to Latest Version of the Forge Viewer

Organizations that have a license to Kahua’s “Model Viewer and 3D Markup Tool” will now benefit from the latest version of the Forge Viewer.   This update includes a number of improvements that “come free” with the Forge Viewer, as well as some usability improvements to Kahua’s 3D Markup Tool. 

Uploads from Google Drive now supports uploading files from shared folders.

Table Layouts

Mobile users can now view embedded table data as a horizontally scrollable data set or toggling to view it as vertically scrollable stacked data.

GPS Location on Photos

For photos with GPS metadata, Kahua now captures and stores the GPS data on photo upload.

To continuously improve our best-in-class Kahua provided extensions, we will be updating offerings to include the following features:

Kahua for General Contractors, Kahua for Owners, and Kahua for Program Managers

New Role to Grant Editing of Project Details to a Specific Project

Previous to this release, the only way to grant a User permission to edit a Project’s Details was to grant the permission at the Project’s parent partition.  However, doing this granted this permission to all of the sibling projects as well, not just the specific project of interest.

While the method just described will continue to be available as an option, for Kahua’s ‘Portfolio Manager’ app there is now an additional role to grant the ‘Edit Project Details’ for a specific project:

Note This new option will only be available to organizations that use Kahua’s Portfolio Manager extension (kahua_PortfolioManager_Project_Owner_extension).  Organizations who are using Kahua’s BASE Project app (kahua_Project) by itself or who have their own custom extensions, will not have this new role.  However, instructions for adding the role to your own extension are available by contacting Kahua Support.

Log Column Updates

The Responsible Party is displayed as a column in the Log view making it easy to see who is assigned to the punch list types. The column can be hidden in Manage Views.

Punch list pins can be moved on a drawing by editing the punch list record and then clicking and dragging the pin to the desired location. Click save to keep the changes.

Leveraging a new export/ import infrastructure, budget document items can now be exported to and imported from xlsx format files. This process allows for creating new budget items and updating existing items.

The simplest approach to update budget items is to Export the items to a file, edit as required, and import the updated file back to Kahua.

Here are some important aspects of the import process:

The file leverages the EntityID column to map between Excel rows and a given Budget item.  

  • The EntityID (aka the databaseID) is the underlying internal ID the system uses to identify each item.

  • If the entityID value is empty, the import will add create a new budget item for each Excel row. 

  • If the entityID value cannot be mapped to an item on the Budget document, the import errors out and cannot be completed.

The import respects Items Include Quantity checkbox.

  • The import respects Items Include Quantity checkbox.

  • If items Include Quantity is not checked – Total is used, ignoring any value Quantity and Unit Price columns. The system will set Quantity to 1, and Unit Price = Total. 

The import is in Project Currency only

  • Budget items may be in different currencies.  

  • However, the import only supports project currency amounts. 

  • If an existing item is in a different currency than the project currency, import will update the underlying project currency amount. The system will display the converted amount in the currency of the item.

The import respects Status to map to the appropriate Cost Unit

  • The status of the item drives which Cost Unit is updated via the import.

  • If no status is provided, the system defaults to the configured default status.

Enhancements

The following updates are being added to Kahua’s Packaged Submittals extension and base app:

All Workflows, Submittal Packages and Items — Materials Field Added

The Materials field added to the Submittal Package and Items base app in 2022.7 (see release noteshere) is now available in both the default and owner directed workflows for submittal items and packages.

Users can use this field to populate fields on their submittal items (including items within a package) with data from their materials catalog.

The Vendor on a material in the Materials Catalog application must match the Submitting Vendor on a submittal item for the material to be added to the submittal item.

The material field is configurable and can be hidden in configuration.

All Workflows, Submittal Packages and Items — Disable Submitting Vendor Workflow

A new “Disable Submitting Vendor Workflow” setting has been added to the settings tab of configuration for submittal packages and items.

Enabling this setting hides all action buttons that send a task to the submitting vendor in both the standard and owner directed workflows. While this setting is enabled on a project, the following workflow actions do not appear to users:

Standard Workflow Packages and Items:

  • Request Submission

  • Request Corrections

Owner Directed Workflow Packages and Items:

  • Request Submission

  • Request Register

  • Return for Corrections

To completely remove the submitting vendor role from a project’s submittal records, Kahua Admins can enable this setting and make the submitting vendor and all its related fields (Submission Due from Vendor, Vendor Submission Period, etc.) non-visible on the Fields tab of configuration.

Owner Directed Workflow, Submittal Packages — Fix to Missing Values on New View of Package/Items, Report Updates Required

Previously in the Owner Directed Workflow, when adding an existing submittal item to a submittal package with track item with package = true, the following fields did not display on the item in the “new” view of the package:

Consultant Reviewer / Response

Consultant Reviewer / Comments to Consultant

Model Number

CC / Notification

Response Distribution

As a result of the fix to this issue, the attribute name of the model number field was updated in Owner Directed submittal items. Users in the Owner Directed workflow with submittal items/model number referenced in a report need to update their reports to use the new attribute name.

Owner Directed Workflow, Submittal Packages and Items — Fixed Inconsistencies with Submitting Vendor being Required

Previously, there were inconsistencies across the Owner Directed Workflow between submittal packages and submittal items, with the submitting vendor field being required for the "Assign to Coordinator" and "Submit to Review" actions in some places but not others.
Starting with this release, the submitting vendor field will not be required for either the "Assign to Coordinator" or "Submit to Review" actions anywhere in the submittal packages or submittal items Owner Directed Workflows. Kahua Admins can still make the submitting vendor field required in configuration (this will make the field required for the submittal to be created).

Default Workflow, Submittal Packages and Items — Display Consultant Responses on Workflow Record

Two new Fields have been added to the default workflow of both submittal packages and submittal items:

  • Display Consultant Responses Upon Completion

  • Display Consultant Responses Upon Consultant Response

    • Both fields are defaulted to “false” and not visible by default

Kahua domain admins can make these fields visible on each record, or simply default them to “true” and leave them invisible to update the behavior of their project’s submittals. 

When visible, these settings can be toggled on each individual submittal record. Only one of these settings can be set to true for each record.

If “Display Consultant Responses Upon Completion” is selected, consultant response notes display on the submittal record after the review process has completed (official reviewer / owner’s rep have responded). 

If “Display Consultant Responses Upon Consultant Response” is selected, consultant response notes display on the submittal record as soon as the consultant responds to their task, even though the official reviewer has not yet submitted their final response.


If neither checkbox is selected, consultant response notes do not display on the completed workflow record (current behavior).

This functionality is currently only available in the Kahua Submittal Package Workflow and Kahua Submittal Item Workflow. These fields do not display on, and their default values do not affect behavior in either submittal package or submittal item records using the Owner Directed Workflow.

Default Workflow, Submittal Items — Official Reviewer Review Period / Due Date No Longer Required by Default

Previously, in the Kahua Submittal Item Workflow only (not the standard submittal package workflow) the user was required to input either an official reviewer due date or official reviewer review period by default.


This is no longer required by default. If a Kahua domain admin wishes to require either of these fields for their project records, they can set these fields to be required in configuration.

Enhancements

The following updates are being added to Kahua’s Daily Reports extension:

Editing Reported Workers in Companies Grid and More Detail Log View Creates Labor Type Item

Kahua admins can configure their daily report company labor to be labor summary only by default on the defaults tab of daily report configuration. KDAs can also provide a default value for the shift length of each reported worker on the same tab.

After setting up the configuration pictured above, Daily Report/Companies items have their labor type set to labor summary row by default, and the Total Labor Units for each entry in the Companies/Labor Type grid automatically displays Reported Workers x Default Shift Length. 
Previously Total Labor Units only calculated from within the detail view of the more detail panel of a company item. Now, users can calculate the Total Labor Units of a company by editing the Reported Workers value directly in the Companies items grid.

Users can also edit the Reported Workers value in the log view of the companies more detail panel.

Entering reported workers in either of the ways listed above creates a TotalManpower row in the corresponding daily report/company/labor type table upon save.

Action Items — Updated

The Action Items app has been updated to our latest technology and now offers standard Kahua platform functionality like more flexible log views, updated UI and other features commonly available to the majority of the Kahua business process applications.  All existing data has been migrated to support these enhancements.

Milestones — Gantt Report

A Gantt report, named Milestones Gantt Report by Month, is available. It supports up to 50 milestone records and can be used with program summary reports. The bar is drawn from the estimated start to estimated finish dates. 

Kahua Host Updates

All Kahua hosts have been updated with various enhancements and bug fixes. The Windows host will automatically update upon first launch after the release. 

Download the appropriate app for your device: