Track RFIs, submittals and daily logs

The Field tab keeps three kinds of record beside your markups. Each is tied to a sheet; an RFI or a submittal also has a pin at the place on the sheet it is about.

• RFI: a question for the design team. Statuses: Open, Answered, Closed.
• Submittal: something to be reviewed before work goes ahead. Statuses: Open, In review, Approved, Approved as noted, Revise and resubmit, Closed.
• Daily log: the day's weather, the number of people on site and the work done. Statuses: Draft, Final.

Every record has a number of its own kind (RFI-0001, SUB-0001, LOG-0001), a title, text, an assignee, a due date, a thread of replies and a list of attachment names.

Add one

1. Open the Field tab and choose RFI or Submittal.
2. Tap or click the sheet where it belongs. A pin appears and the record opens in the tab.
3. Fill in the title, the question or description, who it is assigned to and when it is due.

A daily log is added to the open sheet without a pin. Place pin puts one on it later; Move pin moves any pin. Tapping a pin on the sheet opens its record.

Answer and track

Change the Status and the change is logged in the thread. Write a reply and choose Send reply (Ctrl+Enter also sends). Attachments are names only: type one or choose files, and the list tells the team what goes with the record. The files themselves stay where they are.

A record whose due date has passed and that is still waiting (an RFI that is not Answered or Closed, a submittal that is not decided) is marked Overdue, in red, on the list and on its pin.

Find what matters

The filters sit above the list: type, status, due date (overdue, due in 7 days, has or has no due date), this sheet or all sheets, a text search, and Assigned to me, which compares the assignee with the name MarkupCraft knows you by (see Set your name). The line under the filters counts what is shown and what is overdue.

Export

CSV writes the listed records as a spreadsheet. BCF writes them as BCF topics, each with a snapshot of its place on the sheet, so other BCF tools can list them. Both follow the filters.

Save, offline and merging copies

Records are saved inside the PDF when you save it, and they come back when you open it. Nothing needs a network: add, edit, reply and save on a tablet in a basement, then bring the PDF back. Older PDFs, and PDFs from other programs, open as they always did.

To bring two copies together, open one and choose Merge, then pick the other copy of the same PDF. Records are joined by their ids:

• a record only one copy has is added;
• a record in both takes its fields (title, text, status, assignee, due date) from the copy changed last, as a whole, so if two people changed different fields of the same record, the later copy's version wins; threads and attachment names from both copies are joined;
• if both copies numbered a new record the same, the one that arrives gets the next free number;
• a record removed in one copy stays removed unless it was edited after.

A merge is one undo step.

Limits

• Records are not shared by Studio Live co-editing yet; use Merge.
• There are no teams, notifications or cloud projects for records in this version.
• Pages deleted from the PDF take their records with them (the page confirmation counts them).