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September 2021 Release Notes

Last Updated September 22, 2021


At Kahua, we value our customers and your experience. We want to make sure you have time to digest any changes coming in our 2021.6 Release which will take place on September 18th. With that being said, we are striving to send out Release Notes early in the release cycle which could leave time for minor changes. In the event that changes are made, the revised Release Notes shall be posted here. Please check the latest information on this article to be informed.


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


Desktop Hosts


Kahua Launch Page

Kahua’s product launch page has been updated to match Kahua’s brand guidelines. The new launch page is loaded whenever a user selects to Sign In from Kahua.com or when they click a url link to a record within Kahua.

   


Summary Notifications

Kahua has introduced the ability to deliver either daily or weekly summaries of new Messages and open Tasks. Based on the schedule set by each user, an email will be sent to summarize all notifications within the defined time period.  This email notification will also include direct links back to the Kahua Task or Message.  


To update your settings, click the avatar icon in the top right corner and select “My Settings”. From the General tab, make updates as desired.  By default, new users will receive notifications immediately and a weekly summary on Fridays around 4:00 PM. Existing users will need to enable this functionality via "My Settings". NOTE: The timing of the summary delivery is approximate, as there may be a delay with server processing or the recipients email system; please plan accordingly.  

My Settings:

 

 

Options:
Immediately – If selected, an external email notification is sent immediately upon receiving a new Kahua Message
Summary – If selected, either a Daily or Weekly summary of Messages and open tasks is sent via email at the specified time
Send summaries when I have no new Messages or open Tasks – if selected, the user will receive a summary even if there are no items to act on.  If not selected, a summary will not be sent


Reassign Tasks Renamed To Delegate Tasks

Reassign tasks is renamed to delegate tasks to better align with the existing functionality where the person performing the reassigned task acts on behalf of the delegator. 

 

In the task detail view, the REASSIGN button is renamed to DELEGATE along with the reassign dialog. The existing functionality remains the same.


In the Tasks app, the tasks you delegate are visible in a read only format for awareness.

 

 

Users have two new columns, Delegated By and Delegated To, available to add to the views. To hide task you have delegated, you can create a filter  for “Delegated By” does not equal your user name.

 

 

The task will return to the delegator if it is recalled or resubmitted.  


Note: Tasks created prior to the 2021.6 release cannot be delegated. To resolve this, recall the task and resubmit so it can be delegated or another option is to update the contact to the appropriate user prior to resubmitting so it goes directly to the intended user.


Groups Management Enhancements

The Groups app is most commonly used to associate a set of permissions with one or more users.  But the Groups app can also be used to just create and manage a ‘Distribution Group’ without any impact on permissions.

 

This release introduces 4 improvements to the Groups apps that can help provide more control over what your organization's users are able to do in Kahua.

  • New Facilitator Role and ‘Community Add’ Permission for People & Companies


Within the Groups app, a new ‘community add’ permission has been added to People and Companies, to control who can add an already existing Person/Company to the Community.

 

Also within the Groups app, a new ‘Facilitator’ role has been added to People and Companies that has the ‘community add’ permission, but not the ‘add’ permission (meaning that they won’t be able to manually create Companies/Contacts).  This will allow users to add Community records to the local Contacts but not create new. 

 

 

 

  • New Moderator Role for Groups

Within the Groups app, a new ‘Moderator’ role has been added to Groups.  This new role enables users to create new Groups and Add/Remove Members (to/from both new and existing groups), but not modify the permissions for a Group.  This role is perfect for enabling certain users to manage Distribution Groups.

 

 

  • Extend the ‘Only allow members…’ flag to optionally include other users as well

Within the Groups app, there has long been an option to “Only allow members of the Domain Administrator   Group to modify this Group”, thereby excluding any other Users from making any modifications to this Group, including the ability to even change the Group Membership.  There is now a new option to add additional Groups and/or specific Users to this setting, so that only specified users can modify Permissions or Group Membership (depending on what Group role they’re assigned to).

 

 

  • New File Manager role for 'send for eSignature' permission, removing this permission from existing roles

Within the Groups app, a new ‘eSignature’ role has been added for File Manager.  This new role will only have the “send for eSignature” permission; a permission that was previously “baked into” the Administrator, Moderator, Contributor, and Observer roles.

 

With the introduction of this change, any Groups that already include one of those 4 File Manager roles will now also include this new ‘eSignature’ role as well.  

 

User who have the Administrator Role for the Groups app shall have the ability to enable/disable the eSignature role for any Group, except for the Domain Administrator and User Administrator groups (because the permissions for those groups are all set by the system and are read-only). 

 

 

 

Contacts - Updates to Iconography

Icons for contacts who are currently synced with their community data and contacts who are domain administrators have been updated as follows:

 

Previous Icons

 


New Icons

 



Project Work Days

Kahua now allows admins to establish the days of the week a project is actively working.  There is a new tab within the Configuration app for the Calendar.  Two different calendars can be enabled:
Office Days

Job Site Days

For each of these calendars, the Active Days for the project can be set in the Active Days section.  In addition to the different calendars, admins can define Holidays and Exceptions.  

 

Holidays override the status of an “Active Day” to make it inactive based on the Office Closed and Job Site Closed checkboxes

  • Holidays will set an active day to an inactive day
  • Holidays will not set an inactive day to an active day

Exceptions override the status of a date to make it either active or inactive, regardless of its setting for “Active Days” or “Holidays”

  • Exceptions override the status of a date to make it either active or inactive, regardless of its status set for “Active Days” or “Holidays”
  • Exceptions only affect Office and Job Site calendars; Exceptions do not impact straight calendar days

Each of the above sections follow an independent inheritance model, which allows you to set the inheritance per section, which is ideal for items like Holidays.  

The project calendar can be used by app developers to customize date calculations.  Note that all existing Kahua provided apps and extensions use straight calendar days.   However, in the future, Kahua will be implementing configuration controls to allow using a specific calendar within applications.


Calendar Configuration: 

 

URL Link Available as a Column in Log Views

Optionally choose to display the URL as a column in log views and reports. This column displays an icon that allows you to copy the URL to the clipboard for pasting elsewhere to share with someone, similar to the get URL feature. 

 

The hyperlink is included in the PDF, CSV and XLSX file formats.

 

URL Column: 

 

Quick Print PDF Output:

 

Grouping on Item Grids Now Available (Custom Extension Only)

Application developers can optionally add grouping and filtering to item lists in their applications.  

 

This grouping and subtotaling can be included in any items grid via custom extension.

 

Sample Grouping and Subtotalling for Schedule Of Value items:

 


Design Review Sets - Enable Multi-File Download

Files associated with a Design Review Set may now be multi-selected for a batch download:

 

 

File Manager Controlled Folders -- Set Revision Date or Auto-Increment Revision Number

When bulk-uploading a set of Drawings, the last release of Kahua introduced an option of being able to set the Revision Number to a specific value for all documents that don’t yet have a Revision Number (while still allowing the Revision Number to be manually input for specific documents as necessary). 

 

In much the same manner, this release provides the option to set the Revision Date to a specific value for all documents that don’t yet have a Revision Date (while still allowing the Revision Date to be manually input for specific documents as necessary).  Note that Revision Date can also be set after the import process (using the multi-edit capability) or can be auto-extracted as part of any Title Block template you have defined.

 

Another new option is the ability to auto-increment the Revision Number if there are previous Revisions of that document already in the system.  The auto-increment algorithm will look at the last Revision uploaded, and will increment by 1 (if numeric, or ending in a number) or by the next consecutive letter (if it’s an alpha revision).  Again, this will only be applied to documents that haven’t yet been assigned a Revision Number, and only applies to Documents where a previous Revision exists.

 

Also note that with the new “Title Block Extraction” feature, we have yet another way to automate the input of the Revision Number and Revision Date, but this process requires that these attributes can be mapped to a region on your drawing set, which is not always the case.

 

 

File Manager Controlled Folders -- PDF File Splitting and ZIP File Extraction

It’s not uncommon to receive a set of drawings as a single multi-page PDF or as a ZIP file.  Kahua's Controlled Folders now have a built-in option to split multi-page PDFs or perform ZIP file extraction.


Currently, the File Splitting option will only be presented when uploading a single multi-page PDF.  If the multi-page PDF is uploaded as part of a batch upload, it will be uploaded “as is”.  Likewise, the ZIP File Extraction option will only be presented when uploading a single ZIP file.

 

Note that when a set of drawings is represented by multi-page PDF, and this PDF is split into multiple single-page sheets, Kahua will then provide the option of auto-naming these sheets based on a Title Block extraction. But this ‘sheet rename’ feature will only be enabled if you’ve toggled on the “Title Block Extraction” feature, which is currently in BETA.



WBS Segments – Update Segments on Saved Activity Codes

Users who can edit the WBS Segments can now update the lowest level segments on previously saved Activity Codes or WBS items.

 

IMPORTANT - this capability, plus a long-standing performance enhancement to activity code segments, required a significant behind-the-scenes refactoring of the WBS Segments.  Kahua will coordinate any custom applications or extensions with any affected clients or partners.  However, this refactoring may impact external integrations and reports accessing WBS Segment information.  See the following articles, looking for WorkBreakdownSegmentValue:

 

Open the level of the WBS you wish to update in read-only mode.  Follow the Update button instructions to the right of the lowest level WBS Segment.

 

NOTE: This edit will take a moment or two to cascade its way through the WBS Tree.

 

Update Button on Lowest Level Segment:

 

Edit Segment Modal:

 

Capital Planning -- Configure Previous Year Data 

Kahua’s Capital Planning application now allows configuration of how previous years’ data is displayed.  This can be adjusted using the “Default Timescale Previous Years” configuration setting.

 

Configure Default Time Scale for Previous Years:



Mobile Hosts


Recently Opened Files Action

Within the File Manager app on mobile devices, Kahua now stores recently opened files to make file navigation faster. For each project, the last 5 files accessed are remembered, regardless of folder, and can be accessed through the Recent Files icon on the top right. 

Media Enablement

Our mobile solution now supports uploading and playing video and audio files within Kahua.

 


QR Code Support

Added QR Code scanner to our mobile solution for QR Codes that point to a record within Kahua or an external URL.


 

Other Updates

  • Updated Project Selector to allow user to tap the project name to display the project change UI
  • Added Copy Link action to mobile to copy the URL of the currently selected record to the device clipboard
  • Enabled Design Review application for mobile



Kahua Provided Extensions


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

 

Expense Pay Requests – Refresh From Previous Pay Request

Kahua Expense Pay Requests now have a refresh button to update the current pay request with the latest information from the immediate previous pay request.

 

This feature better supports the editing of multiple pay requests at the same time.

 

The button is available to users who can edit the pay request. The document opens in edit mode, allowing for review and editing before saving the refreshed data.

 

Screenshot caption: 

 
Funding Pay Apps – Manual Retainage, % to Date Editing, Refresh from Previous Pay Apps 

We are incorporating the recent enhancements in Expense Pay Requests into Funding Contracts.  

 


Schedule of Value (SOV) Breakdown Updated 

We updated the SOV Breakdown application to improve usability and provide more consistency in handling contracts and change orders on the SOV.  These enhancements leverage the new Item Grid Grouping functionality.

 

Highlights include:

  • Merging content from the original contract and changes orders into the same grid
  • Allowing change order lines to be broken down the same way as contract lines, providing defaults and settings to fast-track change orders if desired
  • Providing line-by-line rules on the contract to process designated contract lines for immediate billing, while suppressing automatic billing processes for other contract lines.   For example, a contract line for Contingency can suppress auto-adding SOV items, while the main scope of work line item(s) automatically populate for billing purposes.

 

 

Associate Change Order Lines to Contract Lines (SOV Based Contracts) 

We introduced Associated contract lines in 2021.5.  We extended this functionality to Schedule Of Value (SOV) based expense contracts in 2021.6.  

 

Using SOV Breakdown on contracts provides flexibility to break down a given contract line item or change order line item as required.  Associating Change Order lines with contract lines adds (or subtracts!) money on existing contract lines.  This can represent new scope, moving money between line items, or a mix of both. Combining both features provides powerful tools to manage high-level contract lines via the change management process, breaking down or aggregating the resulting amounts as appropriate for the billing processes.

 

 

Pay Requests - Overall % Complete Available 

This additional attribute is a minor but highly requested update. We now display the overall % Complete on Expense pay requests.

 

Pay Request – Total % Complete:

 


Kahua for Subcontractors


Project App Updates

The Project Details tab has been updated to include the project Start and Completion Dates and the project address has also been relocated to this tab.  The roster section has also been updated to include logic to populate the company when a person has been selected.  Additionally, more attributes have been made available to display in the log view.


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:

  • Kahua for Mac
  • Kahua Mobile for iOS on iTunes
  • Kahua Mobile for Android on Google Play

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