Construction Viz

How Adaptive Cards Can Turbocharge Your Construction Project Management Processes

How-To | June 14, 2021

Wouldn't it be great to get more of your project management workflow done in Microsoft Outlook and Teams without needing to log into other enterprise systems? Adaptive Cards technology enables you to do just that by providing an open, lightweight, and flexible framework to integrate user experiences into other applications, including Outlook, Teams, and more.

Technology is changing at a fever clip, and construction organizations are having to adapt to survive. Owners, contractors, and construction management organizations are all scrambling to implement the latest whiz-bang IT solution for managing their projects. Unfortunately, project managers and users are often left having to learn and navigate many different systems and processes on top of just trying to do their job. So how can you move the technology forward without leaving your team in the technology wake?

Adaptive Cards are a JSON-based and platform-agnostic way to deliver app data into a native UI. We use it to extend the functionality of Construction Viz, our turnkey construction project management solution, into Microsoft Outlook and Teams. With Construction Viz and Adaptive Card technology, organizations can collect data from users via email (e.g., filling out an RFI or managing approvals) without requiring them to log into another system. We also leverage Adaptive Cards to enable Construction Viz users to share dashboards and reports via email or Teams, again without needing the recipient to log into any other system.

Check out our blog describing how Construction Viz takes advantage of Adaptive Cards. You can also learn more about Adaptive Cards here and here.

Adaptive Card approval embedded in Email from Construction Viz

Why Adaptive Cards matter for construction projects

The number and complexity of systems in construction will only continue to increase. Adaptive Cards take away the training, double-entry, errors, and inefficiencies that can come with multiple systems and new technologies. It allows your team to focus on what is essential for them to do their job and provide the data you need to manage your project's success.

So, no matter which systems house project-related data at your organization, you can flatten the IT learning curve by using Adaptive Cards to provide your end-users with a streamlined and simplified way to get their job done.

Learn how Adaptive Cards can streamline your projects

Find out more about our Adaptive Card technology by submitting a free consultation request. If you prefer a turnkey project management solution powered by Microsoft 365 and SharePoint, check out Construction Viz and our extensive lineup of construction apps.

Welcome to the new and improved LydonSolutions.com

Company News | May 10, 2019

We are excited to launch our new LydonSolutions.com website with a redesigned mobile-responsive theme and several other enhancements. You may have noticed that our ConstructionViz.com site also recently underwent a minor refresh. Read on to learn more about what’s new on both sites.

What’s New on LydonSolutions.com

Web technology has come a long way since we launched our original site in 2009 and a redesigned version in 2014. Not only have monitor screen sizes kept getting bigger and wider, but the portion of our web traffic from users on phones and tablets continues to grow. We also wanted to make it as easy as possible for web visitors to learn about our products/services, events, and resources.

With these goals in mind, our redesigned site is optimized to provide the best experience possible with room to grow for several more years.

Fully mobile-responsive for today’s devices

The new Lydon Solutions website has a brand-new design that should look good on the latest widescreen monitors while scaling down gracefully for comfortable viewing on mobile devices.

A spotlight on events

Our team attends multiple conferences and events each year not only to show off the power of Construction Viz and our other solutions, but because the invaluable feedback we receive from real-world construction professional shapes and improves our products. So we created a new Events section to let the community know about upcoming events we will be at and provide a way to schedule meetings with our team.

Magazine style blog

Our team regularly puts out blog articles on topics ranging from product updates to tips and resources for construction project management teams. Our revamped Blog section boasts a bold magazine-style article template, a dedicated blog search function, category pages, and related/suggested articles.

A focus on growing our team

The key to the success of Lydon Solutions is the outstanding people that make up our team. Our updated Career section will help us find the best and brightest talent to take our solutions to the next level.

Other under-the-hood updates

Many other changes lie behind the scenes, like using the latest and most secure web technologies, sitewide search, an improved contact form experience, various security enhancements, interactive widgets, enhanced administrative features that will make it easier for us to update the site, and more.

The Refreshed ConstrucitonViz.com

We also refreshed ConstructionViz.com, the information hub for our construction project management solution, which we launched in 2016. The site now features a bolder home page, an expanded section for our growing lineup of Construction Viz Apps for Microsoft SharePoint and Office 365, and numerous design tweaks. Like our Lydon Solutions site, the new ConstructionViz.com also underwent the same sort of under-the-hood updates to improve performance, security, mobile-responsiveness, and administration

The above lays the groundwork for a couple of exciting enhancements on the horizon. First, we’ll be implementing a blog/news section on ConstructionViz.com to highlight product news and updates. Second, as we announced earlier this year, we are working on a new marketplace and streamlined installation process for our Construction Viz Apps. When the marketplace and updated installers are in place, any user will be able to select, buy and install our apps in a few simple steps. No IT expertise required.

Get a Free Consultation & Stay in Touch

We invite you to schedule a free demo and consultation to learn more about how Lydon Solutions can help your organization reduce cost, stay on schedule, and be more efficient with your construction programs and projects. And don’t forget to signup below to join our mailing list so you don’t miss any future updates.

Construction Viz: Looking Ahead for 2018

Company News | January 11, 2018

2018 promises to be an exciting year for all of us at Lydon Solutions. We will be building on the success of Construction Viz – our flexible, subscription-based construction project solution powered by SharePoint 2016 and SQL 2016 – with some very exciting new announcements for the coming year.

As we look forward to 2018, we cannot help reflecting on our past years to see the trajectory of where we are heading. Here is a brief look back – and a preview of the awesome new offerings we’ll be introducing next month.

Our Mission to Build the Perfect Construction Project Management Software Solution

2009 – Pioneering SharePoint as a Construction Project Management Solution

We founded Lydon Solutions in 2009 as a woman-owned business enterprise with the mission of offering the best tools for managing construction projects. Our experience deploying many systems over the years convinced us that SharePoint is the ideal foundation for a construction project management information system. SharePoint’s flexibility and extensibility have made it the most widely adopted platform in the enterprise. However, no one was using its full potential to manage construction projects. We set out to change that.

Our initial development was rudimentary. We started delivering solutions using out-of-the-box tools like Microsoft InfoPath and SharePoint Designer and subcontracting hosting to another company. This approach got us into the market quickly and helped us hone our skills, understand the software industry, and build the foundation of how to deliver complete solutions. Our offering worked well for our clients who were just starting to understand the benefits of a web-based construction project portal.

Market conditions soon changed. We found that our clients wanted more: More functionality, more reporting, and more dashboards. They also wanted a single point of contact for support issues. Out-of-the-box offerings began to lose their appeal since they lacked the flexibility and scalability to build into more robust solutions.

2012 – Extending SharePoint with Client-Side Development and Custom Features

We responded to the limitations of an out-of-the-box approach by incorporating client-side development, creating a set of standard forms, adding robust reporting, and incorporating third-party tools as needed for dashboards and custom functionality.

We also began offering our own SharePoint hosting as early adopters of the Microsoft Azure cloud platform to give our clients a complete one-stop solution. There was little information available about doing what we needed to do in Azure when we implemented our data center in 2012. Our clients were just starting to embrace the cloud as well – so it was unfamiliar territory for all.

Our innovation to meet our customers’ emerging needs paid off. SharePoint combined with client-side enhancements delivered via our dedicated hosted environments worked well and proved popular for our construction-industry clients over the next several years. We learned a lot in the process about end-to-end solutions from requirements to hosting.

Market conditions shifted once again. Our customers wanted sites implemented faster. There was no time or money for spinning-up dedicated environments. They also wanted complete solutions with complex reporting, integration with line of business applications, and responsive sites and forms for mobile users.

2016 – Launching Construction Viz as a Cloud-Based Project Management Solution

Meeting the demand of our clients for faster deployment of mobile-responsive project sites with robust features required a new approach.

We responded with a new product offering, Construction Viz, where we combined SharePoint 2016 and SQL 2016 for the best of reporting, integration, custom forms, and GIS mapping into a software-as-a-service platform. Construction Viz is a complete end-to-end solution configurable to each customer’s needs. It is the culmination of seven years of continuous development that has resulted in the best of the best we have to offer.

But we are not the type to rest on our laurels. Many in the construction industry are now adopting Office 365 with SharePoint Online and moving their businesses to Microsoft Azure. Our customers told us that they wanted to have a solution wherever they want, whenever they want, and pick as much or as little of a solution as they want. We listened. Which brings us to our exciting new offering for 2018.

Taking Construction Viz to the Next Level in 2018

In February 2018, we will be supplementing Construction Viz with new custom bundled SharePoint applications that our clients can deploy themselves. These client-side apps are a complete package that include forms, logs, reports, search, and more. Customers can add Construction Viz Apps in minutes to their own environments, including on-premise SharePoint 2013 or 2016 as well as Office 365 SharePoint Online.

Clients now have the ultimate choice:

1. They can use Construction Viz as a fully hosted or on-premise construction project management solution.

2. They can take advantage of our new apps to add specific functionality from Construction Viz into their own environment even if they use Office 365.

Construction Viz truly is project management perfected for your needs!

It has been quite a journey to get where we are. Market conditions, customer needs, and iteration after iteration has brought us here. If you want to use SharePoint to manage your projects, which most companies do, look no further. Lydon Solutions has you covered with Construction Viz and our new application offerings.

All of us at Lydon Solutions are looking forward to 2018 and wish you all a very happy new year. Thank you for some great years – and we cannot wait to take Construction Viz to the next level with you going forward!

See What Construction Viz Can Do for Your Team

Find out more about Construction Viz by visiting our microsite, or contact us to schedule a free consultation and demo. Join our mailing list below to be the first to hear about the launch of our upcoming Construction Viz Apps.

Newsletter (Blog)

Dashboards made simple with SQL Server Mobile Report Publisher

How-To | December 5, 2017

Construction Viz and SQL Server Mobile Report Publisher from Microsoft let you build and easily share gorgeous custom project dashboards with your team.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a well-designed dashboard is worth ten thousand.

Dashboards and visual reports are essential for construction organizations managing multiple projects, letting stakeholders see project status and other critical data at a glance. And since your project team members are constantly on the go, they need to have access to these dashboards on their mobile devices.

Which is why we are thrilled to see Microsoft continue to enhance their SQL Server Mobile Report Publisher – and why we leverage its capabilities within Construction Viz.

SQL Server Mobile Report Publisher, introduced in 2016, builds on technology from Datazen Software, a mobile business intelligence and data visualization startup that Microsoft acquired in April 2015. We were already integrating Datazen’s technology into solutions for our clients, so Microsoft’s move made a lot of sense to us. We were eager to see Microsoft add Datazen’s offerings to the SQL reporting stack.

Fast forward to today and Microsoft just keeps making SQL Server Mobile Report Publisher better. The simple-to-use tool lets users build powerful and attractive dashboards in minutes. Users can then share and access the dashboards directly on a mobile device or embed them into a Construction Viz / SharePoint page like other SSRS reports.

Read on for a quick run through.

How to Create a Dashboard in SQL Server Mobile Report Publisher

Building a dashboard in SQL Server Mobile Report Publisher is very intuitive.

Step 1: Configure Your Data & Settings

SQL Server Mobile Report Publisher has a simple menu system of tabs on the top left of the tool (see image below).

Click through the Layout, Data and Settings tabs to configure your report.

Layout – Where you pick the components of your report, which can include:
• Navigators – Menu system
• Gauges – KPIs
• Charts – Standard charting tools
• Maps – Maps of continents, states, and custom maps
• Data Grids – Grids to filter data

Data – Where you add data from multiple sources to your report.

Settings – Basic report settings such as start and end date.

Step 2: Define Your Target Device

Click the dropdown on the top right to specify whether you are creating a master or a custom version for tablet or phone.

TIP: It is best to save layouts for each so that your dashboard looks good on all devices.

Step 3: Build Your Report

Drag the desired elements (navigators, gauges, charts, etc.) from the Layout tab onto the grid for your new mobile report. You can resize each element as necessary.

If any elements are missing information you need, you can go back to the Data tab to select other data sources. Update the Layout parts if needed.

Step 4: Preview the Report

Click on the Preview tab to see what your report will look like with actual data before you publish it.

Step 5: Publish the Report

That’s it – you finished building your custom report. You can now share or embed your report.

Mobile-first Construction Project Management with Construction Viz

Construction Viz, our turnkey construction project management solution powered by SharePoint 2016 and SQL, lets you stay productive in the office and at the job site.

We designed Construction Viz to offer a seamless mobile-first experience using our bootstrap front-end framework and offline support technologies. So you can use your preferred browser and device to access and update mobile forms and reports—even if you don’t have internet access.

Contact us for a free consultation to learn how you can combine the power of SQL Server Mobile Report Publisher and Construction Viz to provide stunning mobile dashboards for your team.

Come See Lydon Solutions at the CMAA National Conference & Tradeshow

Events | October 3, 2017

Be sure to meet up with Lydon Solutions at the CMAA 2017 National Conference this month in Washington DC. We’ll be demoing the latest features of our Construction Viz project management solution (Booth 206).

It is that time of year again! The Lydon Solutions team is once more headed to the CMAA National Conference and Tradeshow held this year on October 8-10, 2017 in Washington DC. We’re proud to again be a Silver Sponsor for the event.

Read on for a preview of what we have planned for this year’s event.

Construction Project Management Perfected

Every company, project and PM is unique – and your construction project management software should be too!

We designed Construction Viz, our recently introduced subscription-based solution, to be the most flexible and easy-to-use project management information system (PMIS) available. Construction Viz is powered by technologies you trust (Microsoft SharePoint 2016, SQL 2016 and Azure) and built from the ground up to meet the specific needs of construction professionals. The platform includes everything you need to manage your construction projects—document management, dashboards, reports, forms, workflows and more—in one place.

We’ll be showing off several new and enhanced features for Construction Viz at the CMAA conference this year:

New project and program dashboards and tracking tools
Enhanced mapping capabilities and integrations
New mobile web form technology
Adobe Sign integration

We’re looking forward to the conference and hope to see you there.

Let’s Talk About Your Construction Project Management Needs

We welcome the opportunity to learn about your unique needs and to show you how Construction Viz can help your team save time, reduce cost and stay on schedule. Contact us to schedule a meeting at the CMAA Conference – or a free online consultation and demo if you cannot make it to the event.

Why Your Construction PMIS Solution Should be Unique

How-To | June 27, 2017

Your organization’s needs are unique. Your Construction PMIS should be too.

A surprising number of construction Project Management Information System (PMIS) implementations fail. Why is this the case? We published a blog article listing the top 10 most common reasons why PMIS deployments don’t succeed a couple years ago.

But I can boil that top-10 list down to two primary reasons for you:

Runaway costs
Poor user adoption

Underlying both the above points of failure, however, is the myth of a one-size-fits-all PMIS solution.

Debunking the myth of a one-size-fits-all PMIS solution

Many vendors promise that their PMIS is turnkey, that it includes everything you need and is ready-to-deploy for your organization. They show off all the pretty automated reports and tout their long feature list.

This may all sound good in a slide presentation. Problem is, there is simply no such thing as an out-of-the-box PMIS solution.

Any PMIS you deploy will require costly customizations to fit your business processes:

Every PM and team in your company will do things a little differently. Those cookie cutter workflows, forms, and processes will need be modified.
You may need to interface your PMIS with various other internal company systems, some of which are probably legacy software. That means custom integration and programing.
Your stakeholders input data differently (e.g. offline forms, maps, interactive dashboards, etc.) and they consume data differently (e.g. interactive lists, reports, Excel, etc.). More customization will be required to meet those needs.
Finally, management will want custom reports pulling together data from multiple systems and sources. Since those reports are specific to your organization, they will need to be custom created by the vendor or a consultant.

You get the idea. There is simply no way that something off-the-shelf will seamlessly fit all your organization’s processes and workflows without modifications. This is where the runaway costs start.

Even after the customizations, that off-the-shelf PMIS still probably won’t be flexible enough to help your team do their job, so they won’t use it. They may enter data if you mandate it. But they’ll primarily rely on familiar tools (like Excel) that help them get their job done. Poor user adoption now means the data in your PMIS is incomplete or your teams are duplicating efforts by using multiple systems.

All the above add up to one sad fact: Your organization just wasted a ton of time and money based on the myth of a one-size-fits all PMIS deployment.

Why you need a construction PMIS tailored to you

Every company, project and PM is unique. The PMIS you deploy should be unique too. It should fit how you and your team work while also being powerful, extensible, mobile, and easy to use.

Meeting the unique needs of construction organizations was the inspiration behind Construction Viz, our recently introduced subscription-based construction project management solution.

We designed Construction Viz based on the belief that every aspect of a PMIS needs to be meticulously designed around your organization’s processes by professionals that have both construction and IT experience.

Our expert staff will collaborate with you to fully customize Construction Viz to meet your organization’s unique needs. That includes workflows, forms, reports, and integrations. It’s this solution provider mentality that sets Construction Viz apart in the industry.

We also wanted Construction Viz to be cutting-edge, but still ensure complete backward- and forward-compatibility with essential construction industry systems. Which is why we selected Microsoft SharePoint 2016, SQL 2016, and Azure to power Construction Viz. Not only are these established enterprise platforms that you already know and trust, they also support all the features your organization needs in a PMIS solution. Construction Viz tailors these tools for your construction project management needs.

Construction Viz’s industry leading technology and features

Construction Viz gives you the power and extensibility of the Microsoft ecosystem – including SharePoint, SQL, Office and more – optimized for construction and customized for your organization.

Key Features of Construction Viz:

Complete flexibility – Extensive customization and integration options powered by SharePoint 2016 and the Microsoft enterprise ecosystem.
Robust reporting – Powerful SQL 2016 database technology and reporting capabilities, including SSRS (mobile and paginated reports), geospatial mapping, dashboards, KPI widgets and more.
End-to-end security – Second to none security and compliance with the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.
Mobile support – Productivity in the office and the field with complete mobile and offline support.
Integration galore – Ready integration with the industry standard software you use every day (Office, Oracle Primavera P6, SAP, ArcGIS and more).

There is another advantage to consider. Because Construction Viz is built upon industry-leading enterprise platforms like SharePoint, SQL and Azure, you can rest assured that your organization won’t be stranded in a proprietary walled garden where customizations or integrations are prohibitively costly. Or, worse yet, surprised by a vendor going out of business. Construction Viz offers you the peace of mind and reliability of using Microsoft’s widely deployed and extensively support platforms – optimized and enhanced for construction project management.

There are many PMIS platforms to choose from out there. Only Construction Viz is designed around you and your project.

A version of this post also appears in the special CMAA section of the June 19th issue of ENR.

See what Construction Viz can do for you

Find out more about Construction Viz by visiting our microsite, or contact us to schedule a free consultation and demo.