Filtering by phase - D-Tools Forum

**Kevin Mikelonis** · 02-07-2008, 01:48 AM

I have a project and want to filter the proposal report to only include items in the rough-in phase.

So, set the filter to Phase - Equal to - Rough-in

The report returns no data.

All rough-in items in the proposal are in packages or are accessories.

So, I add a lone piece of wire from the rough-in phase and try to run with the rough-in filter set again.

My report shows 1 item, the lone piece of wire.

I must conclude that the orugh-in items are being overlooked because they are in Packages or are Child items.

Please tell me this is not how SI5 is supposed to work, do I need to create a custom report?

Oddly, I can run a proposal summary and get a report, but do not trust what its made up of since the proposal report is excluding items.

What's missing?

02-07-2008, 12:22 PM

Originally Posted by Kevin Mikelonis

I have a project and want to filter the proposal report to only include items in the rough-in phase.

So, set the filter to Phase - Equal to - Rough-in

The report returns no data.

All rough-in items in the proposal are in packages or are accessories.

So, I add a lone piece of wire from the rough-in phase and try to run with the rough-in filter set again.

My report shows 1 item, the lone piece of wire.

I must conclude that the orugh-in items are being overlooked because they are in Packages or are Child items.

Please tell me this is not how SI5 is supposed to work, do I need to create a custom report?

Oddly, I can run a proposal summary and get a report, but do not trust what its made up of since the proposal report is excluding items.

What's missing?

The following thread answers your question:

By Phase

The proposal Summary iterates over the "Items" (flat representation of the physical equipment and labor items in a project) so the numbers are correct.

-R

**Kevin Mikelonis** · 02-07-2008, 03:11 PM

Hi Rick,

Thank you for your reply.

Also thanks for the link to the thread, in reading it, I guess the answer is...

No, I cannot filter a proposal by phase anymore and really know if it is inclusive of all the items required for that phase.

I wonder how many users have proposals that they were asked to supply rough-in figures for after creating the entire project, and have been burned by items being left out because some of those rough-in phase items were in packages or were accessories?

We found this because ALL of our rough-in items come into projects as Packages or accessories, so the report was empty.

MED and PDSG are in agreement of the speed, efficiency, and affect of this approach of building databases and building projects.

It is taught in the database courses we deliver in MIT and in the project development classes in MIT as well.

Now I come to a simple report example that users are asked to perform often, and it does not work any more, it used to work.

Why can't SI5 do what SI4 does with this filter?

Why can't the filtering strength of the datamatrix be applied in the reporting?

Users of this software are being forced to 'know the code' to make it work rather than 'learn the features' and that is not a good recipe for longevity.

avzone · 02-07-2008, 05:51 PM

I have to agree with Kevin. We have not migrated to SI5 because of issues like this. Barely a week ago, we decided to begin planning to make the switch. I guess this is just another reason to continue waiting and stick with SI4.

**Kevin Mikelonis** · 02-07-2008, 06:35 PM

If you need to do filter by phase, Copy the project, use the filter in the PDM (which is GREAT!) filter for the items you want to not show, delete them all, and run you proposal.

Why can this be done and the same filter cannot be applied to the proposal report?

Well, I don't know the answer to that...

Bottom line for SI5 Users, BEWARE that when filtering by phase, you may EXCLUDE items (and therefore dollars) from you proposal if you use Packages and Accessories.

This was not an issue in SI4, it worked, so if this is a practice you have used in the past, be careful you do not give away profit.

I consider this a MAJOR issue, not a bug but an oversight that can but you in a big jackpot!

Using this software should not require running a calculator against the reports to determine if the numbers are right.

RandyB · 02-07-2008, 07:55 PM

Kevin and others,

Can you give me an idea what you are using the proposal filtered by phase for? Is it for progress payments? Do you have clients sign off on each phase separately? Do you use a full proposal as well (showing all phases)? Is it important that these maintain the same formatting? Is it important to show packages? Why?

Understanding how this fits in with your process will help us choose the best solution to this issue. Please give me as much info on this as you can.

Thanks,

Randy Bownds
Program Manager
D-Tools, Inc

RandyB · 02-07-2008, 08:13 PM

Originally Posted by Kevin Mikelonis

Bottom line for SI5 Users, BEWARE that when filtering by phase, you may EXCLUDE items (and therefore dollars) from you proposal if you use Packages and Accessories.

This was not an issue in SI4, it worked, so if this is a practice you have used in the past, be careful you do not give away profit.

I consider this a MAJOR issue, not a bug but an oversight that can but you in a big jackpot!

Using this software should not require running a calculator against the reports to determine if the numbers are right.

Everyone,

I want to point out that the totals in the Project Summary are correct, so no one is at risk for losing money if filtering a proposal by phase, unless you are not using the Project Summary.

The only observable thing is that the line items will not add up to the total, since those items in packages get filtered out of the items list.

That is not to say this works as it should. Please see my other posting requesting more information about what this document is for.

Best regards,

Randy Bownds
Program Manager
D-Tools, Inc

**Kevin Mikelonis** · 02-07-2008, 08:57 PM

Integrator presents client with $50,000 turn key system proposal.

Client is concerned about construction project costs and wants to be certain the rough-in for the system designed by the integrator is completed and is ready to sign off on the rough-in.

Integrator wants to produce a proposal and present it to the client to secure the rough-in portion of the project.

The rough-in proposal should look the same as the complete system proposal.

Same format, same order, same structure, not some other format that happens to be the only one that works with filters like line item detail.

This use case is common place in our industry.

CEDIA's most basic sales courses teach integrators to present complete proposals and be armed with a proposal for the rough-in to close a deal if the complete price is over the clients cost expectations.

It is insane that this functionality is gone now and considered custom

We work with SI5 up, down, in, and out all day, and we found this problem as an integrator that was asked by a client just yesterday to do precisely what was described above.

This is not in anyway an exotic application and users need to be aware of the fact that this filtering issue exists.

I am glad to know the numbers in the summary are inclusive of the proper items costs, this has not been something we saw when running our filtered rough-in report becasue it returns NO data since all items for rough-in are in a package or are an accessory, so we get no report.

RandyB · 02-07-2008, 09:22 PM

So, the rough-in proposal is a contract document that is often signed without the client signing the full proposal, right? Do you then ask the client to sign a second (or third or fourth) proposal as more work is approved? Do these separate documents add up to make the total contract, or do you create a "complete" proposal showing all items the client has signed off on?

Sounds like you want to complete a total system design, present the full proposal to the client, then bite of specific chunks (in this case by phase) for the client to sign off on and begin work. That way the client can commit to only part of the work while understanding the total scope of the project. Is that right?

Randy

RandyB · 02-08-2008, 11:57 PM

Next question:

If you had a package that included items from different phases, how would you like that to work? Would you like to see only those parts in the filtered phase appear? Then the other parts would appear later when you ran a proposal filtered by the other phases? This would essentially split the package up from an invoicing point of view.

Another alternative would be to assign an entire package to a phase, so that all parts of the package would appear regardless of which phase the individual components are in.

I'm wondering if this is not a company-wide decision: you are either a company that does per-phase proposals and thus have packages where everything is in one phase, or you do not do per-phase proposals and have packages where items are in different phases.

Anyone want to chime in? It makes a really big difference in how we fix this.

Randy