Project Overview
Whether you’re building a skyscraper, a bridge, an underwater tunnel, or an oil rig; you need the most current design and construction drawings right there in your hands.. not back in your office. Up until now though, those docs have only been available onsite in hardcopy (aka paper) with all the issues that entails.
Aconex Mobile bridges this gap between where the info is and where it’s actually needed, ensuring you always have access to the most up to date data required to keep your project on track (and to stop it from literally falling over).
Organisation
Team
Rob Phillpot, GM of Product (Project Sponsor)
Andrew Barron, Senior Product Manager
Kirsten Mann, Director of User Experience,
Belinda Dal Lago, Senior Interaction Designer,
Jeremy Gaedtke, Product Marketing,
Chetan Venkatesh Rukmini, Quality Assurance Engineer,
Ravi Shankar Badharadinne Mata, Quality Assurance Engineer and
Sandil Shah Project Manager, IndiaNIC
IndiaNIC Development Team
Project Brief
We built capabilities into the app that went beyond what could be offered from our traditional web application and bespoke for making working from a mobile device a powerful, not painful experience.
Over the 8 month project we gave our users the ability to more quickly move documents and files received on any app on their device straight into (and out of) the Aconex platform - more easily and faster than the web application can! We gave them specific features to ensure that local versions of any documents they had (construction sites are notorious for horrendous connectivity - and did I mention our remote Oil and Gas rigs that use our application?) were the latest, and if not, the option to update them.
In addition to these great user oriented improvements we added support for 2 factor authentication a well as the ultra high-end Single Sign On support in tandem with our web application!
Project Need
Aconex Mobile has already had over 20,000 downloads and has led our global industry in mobile solutions. However a lead in this space can evaporate overnight if you don’t continually innovate and invest.
Starting as the mobile leader in our space set the expectations high. We needed to better the extensive capabilities we already brought from our world leading SaaS platform.
Globally mobile work forces are changing the way people go about their personal and professional lives, people are continually shifting their work to their mobile devices. People are using their device to interact with a plethora of other systems providing them streams of data - allowing them to easily bring these streams into Aconex and become powerful project documentation is essential.
Our app heavily leans towards exposing the capabilities of the core web application - which doesn’t cater to many mobile paradigms or expectations.
Ever received an email with attachments on your device and wanted to get them into some other system? Let alone keep it in that other app and to properly migrate it into that system properly? Painful isn’t it? We created a whole new area called “My Mobile Files’ which provides a consolidation and safe keeping safe for files and documentation brought in from other applications. From the My Mobile Files area users can view the documents, create new or reply/forward from other mails one or many of the documents as well as register them into their organisation wide document register.
User Experience
Users have high expectations for mobile apps and expect them to be polished, They’ll quickly dismiss apps that aren't - so we didn't want to disappoint. The introduction of iOS7 although initially overwhelming, was quickly embraced as an opportunity for us to update every screen of our iPad and iPhone apps. We've introduced a fresh contemporary design, which ultimately influenced a UI update on our web application.
The introduction of My Mobile files has enabled Aconex Mobile to become the centre of our users workflow. Instead of having to revert back to using the web app to load files into Aconex that their receive via email, they can now do this remotely, via Aconex Mobile. This has truly freed our users from having to return to their desks.
Project Marketing
Our customers have been asking for an Android app, and with it now released Aconex Mobile is available for the majority of mobile devices. The first step was getting our sales and support teams up to speed on the app, so we developed a lot of internal materials and releases to get them excited.
For our users and the market, it’s really a case of education, publicising the app and the benefits it provides in the day to day onsite environment. As such we have made a promotional video, updated the public website and incorporated into a social media campaign. To reach our users directly, we are running a banner advert on our system’s login page, linking through to the video and more information. We are also including features in our client newsletters.
Project Privacy
A core value proposition of Aconex is it’s strong ability to allow, and encourage all project participants, from 1000’s of orgs to utilise a single platform for all their project documentation and ensure that only the intended parties, either as a confidential private document, internally to their organisation or to the entire project community - an ethos we extend through our mobile application as well. We apply these concepts in our desire to offer security and privacy.
As a neutral platform, each organization exists as a separate entity within the system.
Organizations retain complete control over the information they store in Aconex, and can create and control the rights of their users as required.
Access controls
- Aconex is a multi-tenant Software as a Service (SaaS) application
- Access controls on information are enforced
- Roles may be defined to limit access to types of information and application Functionality
- Access control lists may be applied to mail and documents to make them Confidential
- With appropriate authorization, a user within an organization may be granted permission to see confidential information within the organization (e.g. if another employee leaves their organization)
- All documents and activities are searchable, and an audit trail is maintained.
- Because Aconex is a multi-tenant application, logical controls are enforced to ensure users only see the information they are permitted to see. Access is controlled on three levels: by organization, by project and by user.
In Field Services
This category relates to applications developed in order to aid and facilitate organisations requiring mobility whilst out of the office.
More Details