Our Submittal Review work flow process involves one person (gatekeeper) logging all incoming and outgoing submittals.  Newforma accommodates this nicely via Info Exchange if the reviewer is an outside consultant.  If the review is done in-house via email then Newforma lacks a way of notifying the gatekeeper that a review is complete aside from that person having to constantly check the status.  All the information to generate an email is collected in the Record a Submittal Reviewers Response form but since the Next Action box is not checked by the reviewer in our work flow process no notifications are generated.  Since the concept of a submittal gatekeeper is not uncommon our suggestion is to add a Review Complete action to the Next Action drop down in the Record a Submittal Reviewers Response form that will automatically notify the gatekeeper that a forwarded review is complete.

I would also like to see this added as we have already run into the same problem with our in house reviews.

I agree this is needed.  I am one of the gatekeepers of submittals for my organization.
The solution we are having to use is as follows:
1) Select record a reviewer response
2) Type in response and uncheck the next action item box at the bottom of the screen
3) Click Record Response (This takes you back to main submittal screen.)
4) Click once to highlight the submittal
5) To the left under TASKS see option “send email about submittal”, select “To
  receipient” (this goes back to the person who sent it to the reviewer). 
  Type in the email that the submittal has been complete.

This seems to be an extra step, but it is effective in notifying me when the submittal has been completed.

To add our 2 cents;

I don’t presume to know what our admins want specifically, but in general with in-house reviews the Newforma process is a bit excessive when a lone admin is tasked with all the logging.  But for our teams that cannot afford their own admins, this is not so much of an issue because the responsibility seems to bounce from one person to the next within Newforma as it does in real-life. 

Whether through predefined presets of varying depth, or a list of checkboxes, it would be nice to have levels of control over the given complexity/depth of all CA Logging on a per-project basis.  For our projects that only one of our disciplines is working with many 3rd parties the needs are totally different than projects that are completely turnkey (comparitively speaking).

I realize that most likely greatly increases the complexity of HOW Newforma would need to be able to log CA events, but at least with us there is no one-size-fits-all method that will make our teams happy.

I strongly agree that notification is needed.

Our “gatekeepers” frequently miss opportunities to return submittals early because there is no notification of reviewer responses.

As a result, submittals through NPC almost never get returned until the reminder comes out.

This needs to be corrected.

alehman - 13 April 2010 10:46 AM

I strongly agree that notification is needed.
....

You are referring specifically to a scenario with external team members, correct?

No, internal.

alehman - 13 April 2010 12:51 PM

No, internal.

Well, you could create Action Items for the Submittals but I am unaware of how that’s done all-at-once during the initial Submittal Logging procedure, so I’d concede that might be annoying.

Let me talk to our premier admin… the irony is I’m remembering her getting a lot of complaints of too many reminders, but I’ll have to verify that’s regarding Submittals specifically, and if so what was going on.

OK, so when you Log an Incoming Submittal, are you checking the ‘Next Action: Forward for Review’ option?  If so, that creates a Forward Submittal for Review template which generates an email to the desired recipients regarding that submittal you just logged.  In that template there is an option to send a Reminder X Days before Due date, and a Date Due options as well. 

Does that work?

What I need is a notification to the gatekeeper that the reviewer has completed the review.

That will allow the gatekeeper to know when it’s ready to send back, rather than waiting for the reminder notice to come out.

What happens now is after the reviewer completes their review, it just sits there in NPC “action list” because the gatekeeper doesn’t go back and check the status of each submittal periodically.

Great discussion about the Submittal workflow.  MIDPASS describes the work around that we have recommended to customers encountering this situation.  I also wanted to take this opportunity to share that we have addressed this in the 7th Edition release of Newforma Project Center.  As Rail_Fan indicated in the original post, we have added a Next Action called “Email Forwarder” to the Record Reviewer Response dialog which will bring up an email pre-populated with the information about the Submittal (or RFI) for context.  The reviewer can add any additional information if desired then send the email.  That email will be included in the log for the submittal.

Marge

Unfortunately the reviewers aren’t able to remember step 5 any better than the gatekeeper can remember to periodically check all the active projects for responses. To be frank, this seems like an obvious and necessary function that should be provided by the software.

Version 7 may be some time away for us, considering the server hardware upgrades that will apparently be required.