This exciting change puts your documents at your tech's fingertips. Whether it is seeing the ASTM/AASHTO standards or getting to that worksheet, these can be made readily available to the users that need these the most. Any of your current lab sample test methods can be configured to have this available. To do this, start with adding the documents to the system.

1. Adding Documents

Start by navigating in the left hand menu to "Document Storage" and then to "Search". This will then list all of the document current documents that exist within your system. If the files you need are already uploaded, feel free to skip to the next step. Otherwise, we will want to create a new document by either dragging/dropping on to this listing or using the "Create New" under the gear icon (top right of the grid).

Enter the other information to have the documents added to Omnant. Once you have these documents added, you will see them listed in the grid. Note: You can also create folders/subfolders to organize your documents. 

2. Update the lab test methods

Now it is time to associated these documents to the lab methods. To get to this, use the gear menu in the top right corner and select "Lab Sample Configuration". On the next screen, click the "Manage" button under the "Manage Tests/Methods" section. This will take you to a listing of all the test types and methods you have currently within Omnant. You can use the filters at the top or scroll to find the "Required Test" you would like to work with and click on the name.

Now from the edit page for the test, locate the "Test Method" that you would like to work with. Clicking on the name for the method, you will see the following window shown. This window has new options at the bottom to select the "Associated Standard" and "Worksheet". Use the "search" button for each to locate the file you need for each option.

3. Accessing the documents 

Now that we have the documents associated, we will start to see them in other parts of Omnant. If you head to the lab sample status board or the edit page for a lab sample, we will walk through how to access these documents. Once there, open up the edit window for the test entry screen. In the upper right corner of the window, you will see a new button for "Resources". This will allow you and your techs to access these standards and worksheets without going anywhere else. Clicking on either of these options will open up the document in the viewer for the user.

Get all your favorite pages at Omnant at your fingertips. You are now able to bookmark any page within Omnant to allow you quicker access and remove some clicks from your day. Your bookmarks will be listed at the top of navigation, so there is no need to go hunting around for different pages. You have two ways to add pages to the bookmark section:

1. Use the bookmark icons for the navigation

When you hover over any of the links in the navigation - you will see a "bookmark" icon shown. You can toggle this bookmark on / off to add these pages to the bookmark section. 

2. Use the "Bookmark current page" link

For any page, you can also quickly bookmark it by expanding the "Bookmarks" and clicking on "Bookmark current page". This will allow you to rename the bookmark if you want to adjust it from what the system defaults to. 

Adjust order / naming

Once you have your pages bookmarked, you can also adjust the ordering or naming of any of these bookmarks. When you hover over the "Bookmarks" navigation item - you will see a pencil icon shown that will allow you to edit both the order and the name. Once you click on this pencil icon, a window will be shown that allows for this maintanence. 

When you are viewing documents, reviewing reports, etc within Omnant, we provide a state-of-the-art viewer to allow you to see the document without download and cluttering up your desktop. This sometimes becomes a bottleneck though since you need to see the PDF but also move on with other things in the system. There is a new icon available with the viewer to do just that. This new icon will open the PDF onto a new tab, so you can go back to the original and access other parts of Omnant. 

This allow for you to multi-task and get more done with Omnant.

Behind the scenes, we have been working on improving the compression process used when reports are finalized and sent out from Omnant. The goal is to retain the look and feel of the PDFs but to reduce the footprint of the file on storage - both for your clients and yourself. This process runs automatically in the background for all new reports that are approved within the system. 

Nothing you need to do on your end, the system will automatically compress the final PDFs.

We have continued to expand our lab testing and reporting offering. We are excited to introduce the ability to combine various samples into one page reports to summary and graph multiple samples for the same project. This fast and convenient reporting produces easy to read reports that your customers will love. There is a built-in wizard within Omnant that will help you find and select reports to be included. The initial tests/reports that can be combined are:

• Particle/Grain Size (USCS or USDA)
• Atterberg Limits
• Proctors

The first step is to decide which project you will want to create a combined report for:

After selecting the project, you will be able to see and filter by all of the samples available for that project:

With these reports selected, you will then be able to see what types of reports that available for the selected samples. This step also allows you to decide which samples should be included in the final report.

The last step is to give the report a name so that you can quickly reference it is the future:

Now you can print the report and see how the samples compare - all within Omnant.

Do you find yourself editing a project and would like to quickly start a dispatch or write a report? We have added a feature that will allow for you to jump to these items while directly working with a project. You will see the new button in the upper right corner of the "Project Details" section that will allow you to do just that.

Additionally, if you are working with a field report - you will see a new icon that will allow you to quickly jump to the edit page for the project. This icon is restricted based on permissions so only users that have access to edit the associated project will see it. 

We have extended the ability to annotate directly within Omnant for photos that you uploaded for reports. This works on attachments for both field and break reports. This can be done both while you are adding photos or after the photos are included on that attachment. To look at annotating while selecting photos - you will see an icon to the left of the selected photo - such as shown below.

Click on this icon will allow you to start annotating the photo. Similar as the PDF annotation tool, you will see photo and the various tools that you can utilize. Select from the toolbar above the image and start annotating!

If you do not want to annotate the photos right away, you can also use the "Edit" icon once the photos are added to the attachment. Click on the icon shown below, and it will show you the edit window for that particular image.

Once you are on the edit window, use the annotation button highlighted below to enter the annotation tool. 

It is easy as that! All of the annotations can later be revised if necessary.

The system has the ability for you to create standardized paragraphes for you techs to use when creating their field reports. This works in a "mad lib" style that can also be adjusted once added to the field report. There are permissions built into the system to restrict who can create and edit the wording. If you are not seeing the buttons shown below, this means that you do not have permissions to manage these paragraphs or that there are no existing paragraphs created within your system. If you would like more details on how to enable these for your system - please feel free to reach out.

First, the following button labeled "Standard Paragraphs" is what you are looking for. This can be found on the create or edit page for field reports. 

If you click on this button, the following window will be shown. If the permission is enabled for you account, you will also see a button labeled "Manage". This "Manage" button will allow you to create, edit and delete paragraphs that are available to other users within the system. Note: these paragraphs are available "globally" within your system and all users will have access to them.

Once you have created paragraphs - the other users will be able to select as many as they want (or even add the same one multiple times). The user will be able to see which are selected and even re-order the selected ones to control how the report will be initialized. 

You may have already started to notice a new "badge" next to the project when viewing the schedule or the My Schedule page. This new badge - colored in brown - will be included if there are any proctors that are stored in the project's settings. This new feature pushes the data directly to the scheduling page so that you and your techs can quickly see what proctors are stored without needing to go somewhere else. Allowing the tech to have this information at their fingertips when reviewing their schedule or when they are arriving on the jobsite.

Why This Change Matters:

• Quick Data Access – No longer will users need to click around to other pages to get this information
• Improved accuracy – Techs will not have to guess at what proctors might be revelant
• Universal access – This information is now accessible from the schedule, my schedule and the display on the user's dashboard

Were you aware that not all dispatches for a project end up going to the same place? While we have had ways to handle this - specifically by using a custom address when scheduling - now you have a way to store addresses to be reused later. This will allow for you to not have to re-type addresses for regular / recurring locations for a projects. This is accomplished in two ways:

1. Add an alternative address for the project
2. Create a fabrication shop (or equivalent) that can be used across multple projects

For the first example, this allows you to store a secondary address for the project. You can also optionally apply a name for each of the addresses, or allow the system to set the names as "Default" and "Dispatch". Just go to the edit page for the project and you will see additional fields for the project to store this secondary address. Below is a screenshot that shows where you can find these fields on the edit page:

The second option, requires a bit of setup - but once you get this shops added, they can be reused as much as needed. Also if you do not see the options as shown below, please contact us to adjust your permissions within your system. 

The first step is to use the "gear" icon in the upper right corner of the system. You will be looking for an option labeled "Fabrication Shops". Once you locate this option, simply click on the link to navigate to the maintenance page for this feature.

This listing will allow you to maintain which shops are available for scheduling within the system. Simply use the "Create New" button to start adding new shops. For each shop, you can add as many addresses / locations that the shop has. This way when you are scheduling and sending a tech to a shop, it will be as simply as selecting the address from the drop down. Below is an example of a shop being created within the system. Once you have the information entered, simply click on the "Create" button to add the shop to the system.

Now, on to using these two options while scheduling a project! The entry screen will look pretty familiar but there are some new buttons available to use these new addresses. If you did not give the project's secondary address a name - the name shown will be "Dispatch". To access the shops stored within the system, you will need to select button labeled "Shop". In both cases, the system will then use these addresses to be shown from the dispatch so that the tech knows where to go. Also, you do not need to worry about mistyping or having the wrong address.

Selecting the secondary address:

Using the shops to schedule a dispatch:

Why This Change Matters:

• Time savings – Quickly reuse addresses for projects rather than having to type in a custom address
• Improved accuracy – No second guessing if you entered the address correctly
• One-time setup – Once you set up the addresses, the data is available for reuse by simply clicking