Flows: An Introduction (Webinar)

09.07.25

Flows is now available, with the aim of boosting project efficiency by offering a comprehensive way to manage projects. It allows users to connect their designs to a project management system, enabling them to track progress throughout a project's lifecycle, including setting goals, managing timelines, assigning roles, and facilitating reviews.

Webinar - 09.07.25

Transcript

00:14 hi all. Let's, uh, let's go ahead and jump into this session. So, uh, thanks a million for jumping on. I do appreciate, uh, everyone's time. 00:22 Um, I'll try and scoot through this in 20 minutes or so. It's a promise that I very rarely keep getting these things done on time, but I will do my best. 00:31 Um, now, uh, we'll just jump into it. Uh, a lot of you guys know, know who I am. If you don't, my name is, uh, Darren. 00:41 I'm one of the, uh, guys behind the platform previously known as Speckle. Still getting used to not calling the platform Speckle. 00:49 Um, but we've, uh, we've had, um, a lot of support as we've transitioned over from Speckle to better building, and, um, we really do, do appreciate it. 01:00 Uh, I've got the, the praise hands, the thank you hands here just because I wanted to give a thank you both to the folks that have been supporting us for all these years as we've kind of transitioned over to really what we believe we represent now is a more of an all-in-one solution for sustainability 01:18 . And we'll design as opposed to pretty much a specification platform for our failures, believe it or not, that's where we started. 01:24 Uh, but also that those, those, uh, thank you little hands there were for, um, Alistair, who has been deeply involved in this project, one of the team in Melbourne. 01:36 And, uh, he has come up with, uh, I think something that is a really great solution for project management and project, uh, quality assurance. 01:48 And that's very much what we'll be talking about today. So I'm going to turn that camera off there for a second so I can focus and we'll get into it. 01:55 So many of you if you haven't been on my platform since we rebranded, you know, if you don't like our energy, you may, uh, not like the look of the platform, but we've got loads of support and we, we pretty much, uh, really, uh, rebranded the platform because, uh, because of two things we're, uh, venturing 02:16 overseas now. So we're, we, uh, operating further overseas than New Zealand. We up until now been in Australia, New Zealand market, uh, but we're operating in, uh, South America now, uh, the U S, uh, and we're providing more and more support for folks over there. 02:32 So we really wanted something that was a bit more self-explanatory from a branding perspective. And also there was a actually another company called Speckle systems overseas. 02:43 And we wanted to make sure that there was a departure, uh, from, uh, you know, from people confusing us with them. 02:52 So, um, yeah, so let's, uh, let's get into it. So we've got a website, uh, better building.io go ahead and have a look at us. 03:00 Uh, we've also got some docs now. I just wanted to spend a couple of minutes just talking about the docs because it did take me the best part of two months to rewrite the documentation. 03:11 So yes, I did get a little bit of help from AI, but there's only so far it can actually take you. 03:18 So go ahead and do check out the docs because, uh, there is a lot of detail in here. Um, and they have been completely rewritten. 03:28 So if there were gaps that we were, we had left from a documentation point of view, and I know there were quite a few, I'd say that documentation was probably about 70% previously. 03:40 This should take us back up to about 90 odd percent. And you'll see lots of information in here that should make your life easier. 03:49 Speaking of making your life easier this AI search function has now been enabled both on the platform and is also enabled here and you really will get lots of answers from this that weren't previously available because effectively the, uh, the, the, uh, language model is learning our documentation. 04:14 So it should get better and better with time. Uh, just by way of an introduction, go ahead, write a question, topical question in terms of today's session. 04:24 how do I create a flow and you'll get some answers very very quickly. This is available all across the platform and in our documentation so lots of support there. 04:38 Getting into flows, what is a flow? Well, as the claim states here, uhm, every project starts with a flow and what that means is that we are engaging in effectively project management on all new projects moving forward. 04:54 Uhm, we will be, uh, effectively creating a flow and you'll learn what that is over the next ten minutes. but simply put a flow allows you to set project goals allows you to engage in timelines so deadlines key milestones keep your project on track it allows you to assign responsibilities to team members 05:22 whether that's someone doing the work or someone reviewing the work it allows you to effectively track multiple projects all at one time and look at the efficacy related to the delivery of projects it allows you to review so it has a dedicated kind of review system that if you imagine a project project 05:45 A has got to a point and person A or B or C has delivered part of that work then they can submit a review to and then that reviewer can then accept or reject and provide information to back to the person and finally reports this is lagging a bit this particular feature but reports enables you to effectively 06:07 see exactly how much time and effort is being undertaken on in certain designs in certain projects so you could again balance the efficacy of potentially the the project value versus how much resources were committed to it and go from there so lots of stuff here but we're going to go straight into demos 06:30 so effectively this discussion here for 10 minutes will go for will be about how to use this it's available now on the platform and you're going to engage in it to start with in one or two ways we imagine you're going to either going to create a flow from an existing project or you're going to effectively 06:50 use the system uh the automator system to create a flow automatically for a new project and then i'm going to give a couple of examples of how flows can be used Okay, so we jump in here, let's navigate. 07:06 So a bunch of screenshots here, we don't even need to go to the platform, effectively I've just taken all of these off of production, off the actual production this morning, so we can be as clear as possible as to how you would engage in flows. 07:22 Over on the left hand side there, you can see the term flows, this is where you will potentially engage in it but you can engage in it in multiple places. 07:33 Now you're seeing a big blank screen here, there are no flows at all in here at the moment, so what we're going to do to start with is we're going to create a flow for an existing project. 07:46 So I just happen to have an existing project here, it's called Mixed Use Buildings, and I want to go ahead and create a flow. 07:55 So attach effectively a project management system them. To this project, there's nothing there at the moment, so I've got to do a little bit of work. 08:06 I'm going to navigate into the project itself and I guess by way of this introduction there is an assumption here that you've seen the platform already and I'm looking at the list of names here and I can see most of the names are certainly people that have engaged in the platform. 08:23 So I just step back there for a second, you've got a project, you click on the project, you go into the project and then you want to go and effectively go and create a flow so you're going to navigate there to the left and then you're going to find yourself with another blank screen because we've got 08:41 no flow created. So we're going to create a flow, okay. Click create flow, okay, and then we're going to nominate some information into this form here and it's going to be the title, the start date and the end date and the project manager involved in the flow, okay. 09:04 So first of all, let's call this concept design, okay, it's a name, it could be anything. okay the concept design is the title of the flow the start and the end date I've just popped this to the 23rd of this month so that's starting I guess that's starting today and it runs to the 23rd of this month 09:25 and then I've assigned myself as the project manager what that means is that if someone is working on a design and submits that design to a flow they are effectively they are doing the work and then I being me being the project manager will receive information about that project moving forward so I can 09:46 go ahead and review it. So it's a start we click create and then we navigate back to the flow area. 09:55 But before we do just by way of a quick clarity you will receive an email about this so you as the I guess the reviewer or the project manager you will go ahead and find this is created and it's flicked over to you so you can then hit that link there and then that will take you over to this next screen 10:21 here. So this is kind of giving you that timeline saying okay cool we're we're hitting off today and it's running toward the 23rd something called concept design has been created and it's related to this mixed use building project but really it's just saying okay there's there's work that's going to 10:39 be done here the fundamental piece missing at this point in time is well what is that work okay so we're going to add in a flow now and just click add flow and then once you do you'll see another project so effectively what we're doing is adding in a sub flow at this point in time so it's directly connected 10:59 to that flow that project management concept design stage there And we're saying okay, do you know what we're going to do? 11:07 We're going to do it a J1 V3 model And we're going to put it into this concept design stage And we're going to we're going to track this component because this is what we want to connect to We want to know how much time is being, uhm, is being, I guess, used to deliver against this J1 V3 And we've got 11:30 a bit of information that we need to populate So, subject to what's, who's in your team, those team members are going to be available in the drop down menus for assignee Assignee and for Reviewer. 11:45 So in this case, let's say I'm a lone soldier, I'm the Assignee plus I'm the Reviewer. That could be a scenario, very likely to be a scenario for many. 11:56 But or you could see it could be David Carroll, my partner in crime. He could be the Assignee and then I would be the Reviewer, meaning Dave would be doing the work and I would be reviewing. 12:10 Once you add those in, quite simply, you set the start and end dates. So in this particular example, I've just set the exact same start and end days as the, as the concept design. 12:22 So it's just saying, yeah, you've got this much time to do the work and then you set the goal. So you just slap in exactly what you want that person to do. 12:31 So I'm effectively telling myself what I'm going to do here but if the assignee was Dave then I would be saying okay, Dave, you know, assess the current building design. 12:41 Here's some attached drawings and you can see a file in the next step and you're going to run a J1V3 model. 12:48 Okay, that's what you're going to do. And you're going to attach your drawings here and push them, push them straight over. 12:53 And then there's an add to end, which is just a function to organize how the flow appears. Not particularly important from in this conversation. 13:03 And then you're going to click create. And then once you do that, then you're going to go into this kind of summary screen where you can see the J1-V3 model so that's the subflow that we're working on you can see you can see the dates and you can amend and all of this. 13:20 So this is just really a bit of trivia to start with. You can see the goals. So this is going to be the constant goal for this flow. 13:29 And you know, from a goals perspective, you know, this could be a copy and paste from a proposal, for example, so that could be directly popped in there. 13:39 And then we've got something called links, which is where you actually link the design that you're working on to this flow to this J1-V3 model flow. 13:49 I'm going to show you a bit about that in a minute. And then you've got some history there where you can toggle between seeing all, seeing comments, seeing documents and seeing updates. 13:59 And this is just, this is going to build out over time in order for you to effectively track everything related to the communication of this flow. 14:11 And you can see how this is beneficial because it means that you lock in all information into one place. Next step, you go ahead and start the flow. 14:22 So we've just locked in data, we've locked in information, we've locked in the intent do something but we haven't actually said that we're going to start doing that something. 14:31 So we then go ahead and start the work and then we're going to then want to link to a design. 14:39 So once you left click this, you go ahead and find yourself a design. So I'm just going to grab that concept model there. 14:49 It is a model and it allows us to then see in the building modeling and you'll see this in walls, roofs, floors, whatever, everywhere else. 15:00 There is this nomination of link to flow and this provides the person doing the work, the ability to connect back to the project management and effectively all they're going to do is say, do you know what, I'm going to link to the flow and they're automatically going to see the population. 15:19 Of the flows available to them. So in this case, we've only got J1 V3, right? So they're going to link that. 15:27 And that's really it. So by the time they link that back, then we can start to see the momentum where tracking is enabled on the platform. 15:38 So you've got this connection now between what someone is doing and the summation of the project management. And that's really interesting, because then it can kind of give you an idea of where things are at as you go at the beginning of each week, for example, or each month, depending on the duration 15:55 of the projects, and it provides a form of guidance. A form discussion, really, and this area here in particular is going to grow out to have a lot more value added to us once we start stepping through this next stage and getting feedback from you. 16:12 So the more we hear back from you guys, the better it is, because we can then really hone down as to what is useful. 16:21 Now, let's go ahead and jump back into the J1-V3 because I wanted to show how now that design is linked, so that concept of the design being linked is there, and that could, that linked design could be 10 designs, could be 20 designs for all we know, we don't know what you're doing or don't care what 16:40 you're doing, we just enable the facility for you to track as many designs as you want. Next, we're going to want to take the next step in the process, we're going to want to submit this for review. 16:56 So if you're doing the work, you can go, OK, I've done what I wanted to do, I'm going to submit this for a review, and here I've updated this so David Carroll is now the reviewer so you can change this as you go along should you want it should things change and I've just said hey can you please review 17:16 for submission to the project team all all glazing wall roof systems have been checked against specifications will issue report once you have given me the OK now if I know Dave he will be going through this with a fine tooth comb and once he's done so he's going to well he's going to receive a link and 17:36 he's going to say hey I need to go and review this for Darren and then once he gives me go ahead then it's back to here where we can then update the project to be complete or the flow to be complete and effectively close it out at that point in time. 17:55 And then effectively what we'll see moving forward is that the accumulator cumulative number of hours will be presented in order for you to assess the success of the project and you'll be able to, I guess, see where people need more support, need less support, you'll be able to keep everything locked 18:15 down in the same place and, yeah, really, provide a consistent way of reviewing information in a in a way that is directly connected to the project rather than having some third-party way to do this. 18:33 So this is all available now and that right there was an example to create a flow from a existing project. 18:40 Now I'm going to jump over into a secondary example to create a flow from a new project, okay. So creating a flow from a new project is super easy, okay, where you can currently add a project and I'm going to call this one new flow example, terrible name, but we'll give it a and we'll give it a start 19:05 date and an end date and we'll give it project manager just happens to be me once again and now when you do this on your next project you're automatically going to be generated a flow new flow example and once you do that you can go through the same process that I've just shown you and add lots of flows 19:28 so effectively flows can be three deep so in this particular example I've said okay cool I've got new flow don't don't know what it is don't care what it is I have subflow one subflow 1.1 subflow 1.1.1 and these can all be interconnected to the main new flow example and And light as possible to to try 20:01 and not make it an overbearing tasking you know task orientated process. Effectively this would this would displace other trivial management processes in a flash and it could represent it could represent one of a number of use cases. 20:20 Now I I personally think this is where things will kick off okay this is where you have this kind of one-off project flow and you've got a project and that that project X there is your so-called project flow okay so this is just a nomination that I use project flow is the main core flow and then beneath 20:44 that you have a subflow subflow so it doesn't make a difference what it is whether it's h1 whether it's j1 v3 j1 v5 whatever it is that's how it would be managed the most simple version of this is that and I see that being super useful because it means that at least you can start tracking the efficacy 21:04 of your of your designs and how much time you spend on projects and get a feel for where improvements can be made and potentially other things that we haven't thought about. 21:16 So that's the one-off project flow, the simple version. Then you've got this kind of what I call a multi-staged project flow so where that you've still got this project and the project is the main thing that you're focused on but then you've got multiple stages you've got concept design schematic design 21:36 and detail design and they've all got sort of energy models and data models within them so a very quick easy example wasn't meant to be overly complex but then you've you know then we'll call the concept design stage, the schematic design stage, the detail design stage in construction they're going to 21:53 be subflows and beneath those then you can have energy models and daylight models. You could orchestrate your entire entire project around this so that would represent a multi-stage project flow. 22:08 Finally, you may very well have flows that are completely independent from the platform and I'm just going to give one one completely independent which would be a pass fast certification for example and the other would be Greenstar where you may have some modeling or something like that being undertaken 22:30 . But you'll be able to do this in exactly the same way here where effectively project flows and sub flows can all be added in the mix in order to account for them across the project. 22:42 And as we move forward for this kind of independent project flow, what we're working on at the moment is a feature where you can effectively send a link to anyone directly from the platform and say that hey I need information for X for example for a Greenstar credit and then they actually provide you 23:05 the information through a little form and the ability to upload information and then that automatically gets populated straight into the subflow itself. 23:16 The same is true Passive House Certification. The platform for certification at the moment is less than nice to deal with. 23:25 So this process allows you to go OK, cool, I need my material information provided from a supplier, from a builder, from a designer, whoever it is, please dump your insulation products into this flow. 23:42 and therefore I can then review it and close it out all in one place where you've got a seamless communication with the other party and they're effectively doing the work for you rather than you having to receive information find a home for it. 23:59 And that makes me so much more sense when you're planning projects. So there you go, I have kind of kept, kept on time. 24:08 It went for 25, 26 minutes. I'm going to crack that open for questions. I'm going to, let me do the first one. 24:17 Did that make sense? Just a hand up, or we can open up the mics, if you give me some, it did? 24:31 Yep, it did. Thank you. I just had one question, Darren, can we edit the end dates and start dates? Absolutely, you can edit everything. 24:41 Sorry, I didn't pick up on that one. I should have made that clearer. Everything is editable, so you can, you know, if someone, if someone, if the team changes, you can change the people associated to the designs. 24:55 You can change the start date, the end date. You can put the, put the flow on hold. You know how projects go on hold, right? 25:03 some will go on hold for a year, two years, some will go on hold for two weeks. You want to be able to do all of that so that it's that type of that type of feedback that I'm really hoping to get moving forward over the next month or two. 25:19 Because we want to realistically have this as a, as a value add, particularly for consultancy to ensure that they can keep everything organized as well as possible and see how to best prioritize, you know, things coming forward because, you know, obviously from a consultancy point of view, we often have 25:43 projects that only allow for a certain amount of time, let's say 10 hours, let's say 12 hours, let's say 20 hours. 25:49 and you really want to make sure that you know you can forecast moving forward that you've got enough work coming through the door so this is what this is intending to ultimately achieve down the line. 25:59 Thanks for that, Angad. Any other, any other questions there, guys? Thank you. My pleasure. So I didn't get any kind of feedback there on whether the presentation there was, was clear enough. 26:21 Can I just request that one again, just if you can put your hands up, raise your hand if you thought it was clear enough or if there's anything else that you'd like me to elaborate on. 26:31 Thanks Sim. Angelo, Ben, Steve. Okay, cool. We're going to get a bit of feedback there. Okay, cool. Hey, Alex. Um, thanks for that. 26:43 Um, that's fine. Uh, I never know how many people are actually actively listening. Um, so, um, yeah, um, that's great to get that feedback there. 26:53 Cool. Um, so, uh, next steps. Okay. Next steps are going to be, um, to, uh, bring a few more little things to the front and hopefully get as much feedback from you, from you guys now well I got a Justin's got a question for me here thank you Justin now Justin say it was clear I think it will make take 27:21 a few times playing with it to make pure sense fit Justin I completely agree um it there there is a I presented uh quite a lot here um so I think you are right um and one of the challenges we've had so far is that you know how much do we bring to the front because we've got more features that we could 27:41 have brought to the front but we wanted to really make the automation of the flow pertaining to a new project really the starting point of discussion so yeah I do agree do you think I'll get you to put your hands down for a second because I would just wanted to fire over another another question there 28:08 do you see it being something that could be potentially used for multiple projects across your your business or do you think that your in situ processes would would would be better for your business. 28:30 So has it got potential? Has it got legs? Because it's been one of the ones that's been definitely unclear for us as to what other folks are doing. 28:39 So it looks like it didn't receive any feedback on that one. Put a hand up if you think it has Angelo. 28:47 Thank you, mate. Can I make it Darren? Can I make a comment on that? It's Daniel here. Sure you can. 28:54 Yeah, so as I was watching it, it looks like it's producing a Gantt chart of your proposed workflows and targets. 29:05 And the reason I'm piping up now is because it's in direct response to what you just asked. Is there a way to view, because I'm just thinking how I may use it, Is there a way to view the current? 29:19 I suppose you would say status of all projects or is the workflow contained per job? It's both, Daniel. So you can see a top-down view of all flow activity across your team. 29:36 So if you've got a thousand flows, you can see a thousand flows. I don't know if you'd want to. So, you can filter those flows from a week to a month to a quarterly to a year view. 29:49 And then as you dive down into the project, then you're going to be only seeing the flows pertaining to that project. 29:58 So you have a both available. I didn't actually show the, the project one because, uh, uh, I guess I thought it might be, uh, probably going a bit too far in terms of the amount of information that we showed, but yes, you can, you can, um, and, uh, we'll, uh, we're coming, we're coming up with an archiving 30:17 functionality now as well for things that you no longer want to see, because trust me, by the time you start seeing loads and loads of flows, uh, you'll want a way of controlling them. 30:27 Um, uh, because because it can be a lot of information. Anyone else, guys? Okay. 30:46 Well, if that's it, uh, I will leave it there. Uh, feel free to hit, hit, hit us up as usual, um, in the, uh, in our support ticket system. 30:57 Um, and, uh, we'll get back to you as soon as possible. Um, again, thanks for your support over the last few weeks. 31:05 It has been, uh, an absolute rollercoaster getting us to, to this level. Uh, and we're about to kind of make a few more, uh, interesting steps before we really push for full-on international application of the of the platform now. 31:20 So, um, uh, this will be made available somewhere, probably, uh, probably in a new YouTube channel. Um, and, uh, we'll, um, um, yeah, leave it there. 31:30 So, uh, any feedback that you can provide would be super, super appreciated. Um, feedback is always, always, always a thing that we get the least amount when we, when we really legitimately want it. 31:42 So if you can provide any feedback, that would be awesome. Again, appreciate your time, guys. Best of luck with the project. 31:55 And yeah, keep flows in mind. Thanks, Aaron. Thank you.