This article provides information about the Settings/Configuration/Distributions page. Use the Distributions page to configure assignment distributions to create plan review assignments efficiently.

Prerequisites:

1. Configure Project Types for Permitting and Design Review Lists.
2. Configure Review Types for Permitting and Design Review Lists.
3. Configure Groups for Permitting and Design Review Lists.
4. Create user accounts for plan reviewers.
   1. Assign plan review users to Permitting and Design Review groups .
5. For each project type, you will need:
   1. A list of plan review documents that will typically be required, by discipline (review type).
   2. A list of group members who will typically be assigned to these projects.

Workflow Distribution records require:

1. A Purpose and Project Type
2. One or more Review Types
3. One or more Groups
   1. Optionally, a 'named user', who is a member of the group.

In this article:

Understanding Workflow Distributions

During the document intake process, all active Permitting or Design Review workflow distribution records that match the project's selected Purpose and Project Type will be triggered to run. By evaluating each incoming PDF's filename to match the abbreviation of a review type list record, the workflows can determine how to create plan review assignments for the appropriate groups/users.

The intake user can choose to accept workflows as configured and make modifications if needed, before creating the assignment tasks.

About Review Types

The Review Type lists serve two uses:

1. To match the first four letters of the filename to a Review Type abbreviation.
2. As additional information to plan review assignments when a multiple assignments are created for a document for the same Group.

Groups

Groups serve two uses:

1. Workflow distributions and plan review assignments must be associated to a Group.
2. Plan Reviewers must belong to a group in order to update the group assignment status.

Best Practices for Accepting Plan Sets for plan review distribution

Documents will be approved/rejected by each Group as a whole, with whatever disciplines consist in the file. For this reason, communication to your project owners/architects/contractors, etc. who provide plan review documents should include instructions on how PDF's for plan review should be assembled, based on how you distribute plans to your plan reviewers and the disciplines they can stamp (approve). 

For example, some reviewers may conduct mechanical, electrical and plumbing review so one document that contains of all three disciplines is acceptable. 

In this case:

• Create a Review Type called: Mechanical/Electrical/Plumbing and set its abbreviation to: MEP. 
• Incoming files for these users/project types should be prefixed as: MEP_helpfuldescriptionhere.pdf

Create other Review Type list records for each single discipline or combination of disciplines as needed.

File Naming Requirements for plan review documents

Incoming PDF's that follow file naming requirements provide the ability to distribute the documents to the appropriate reviewers/groups. 

When the characters in the filename to the left of the underscore ( _ ) match the abbreviation of a Review Type, active workflow distributions will be triggered during intake. The Review Type abbreviations may not exceed 4 characters.

Using the three documents below as an example, the Mixed Use workflow record (above) would trigger 4 assignments to be auto-created:

In this example, no assignments would be auto-created for the Sprinkler Diagram.pdf, because a Review Type prefix (and underscore character) are missing from the filename.

Distribution Settings

Below are the default settings for workflow distributions:

Reset Approved Resubmittals

Best practices dictate that plan reviews should be performed when new versions are provided, even when the prior submittal was approved. However, this rule can be overridden if desired.

Toggle this setting off if previously completed assignments whose status is Approved should not create new assignments when a new submittal/version is received.

Leave this setting on to reset Approved plan review assignments when new versions are uploaded. 

Enabling Automated Distributions

Toggle this setting on to enable workflow distributions to trigger during document intake. 

Turn this setting off if an integrated back office product will be responsible for creating plan review assignments via our Connect API toolkit.

Permitting Reassignments by Reviewer

Toggle this setting on to allow Reviewer’s privileges to hand off a personal (named user) assignment to another Reviewer in the same group.

This privilege may not be acceptable to some clients. 

Creating Automated Distributions

From the Navigation panel, select Configuration/Distributions.

1. Click the + button on the bottom of the page to open the Add/Edit Distribution form.
2. Select a Purpose and Project Type from the dropdown lists.
3. Choose the Review Type abbreviation(s) if the files will be distributed by discipline or choose ‘Select All’ if the files do not need to be distributed by discipline.
4. Select the Groups who should receive assignments and if desired,
   1. Select an Assignee as a named user or
   2. Choose ‘Select All’  when if all Groups should receive assignments.
5. Verify that the selections are correct, including the Purpose and Project Type.
   1. Changing the Purpose/Project Type will not be allowed after the record is saved.
6. Click the ‘Confirm’ button to save.

Editing an existing Distribution Record

From the Navigation panel, select Configuration/Distributions.

1. Click the pencil icon of the distribution record to open the Add/Edit Distribution form.
2. Check on or off the review types or groups.
   1. Removing a review type or group from the distribution record will prompt a Confirm Delete message box, choose Confirm to save your changes.

Recapping the Rules that trigger Workflows during Intake

During Intake, assignment distribution workflows will trigger if the following conditions are met:

1. Automated Distributions must be toggled ‘on.’
2. The Distribution record must be 'Active'.
3. The Project record's project type value must match to a Distribution workflow record's project type.
4. Incoming filename(s) must contain an underscore character to delineate the file as a plan review document.
5. Incoming filename(s) must be prefixed with a Review Type abbreviation.