You now have more granular control over which of your client distribution sees what reports. This change will affect both the distribution windows when approving reports as well what reports are accessible to the user when they log into the report portal. You can control this for the following types of distributions:

• Field Reports
• Lab Reports
• Break Reports
• Scheduling

Simply by clicking on "No Restrictions" - as highlighted below - you will be presented with configuration on what types of job tasks, test methods, etc that you want that client distribution to receive / have access to. Each of the different types listed above have their own configurations available. This configuration is also set by the project and the same user can have different access for each project that they are part of. 

For your lab sample test methods, you can have the system default the due date to save you some clicking when creating the samples. Each test method is configurable to have different options based on your workflow. To work with this, click on the gear menu in the upper right corner. Select the option for "Lab Sample Configuration". On the next page, click on the "Manage" button under the "Manage Tests/Methods" section.

Once on the grid page, find the test you would like to work with and click on the name. This will navigate you to the edit page for this test. Locate the method in the grid on this page that you would like to work with. Clicking on the name for this method, will bring up a edit window. Locate the field for the "Due Date Default" - this will allow you to select from some preset options on how far out from the received date for the sample to schedule the "Due Date". Also you will see a checkbox labeled - "Due Date Skip Weekends". This checkbox will tell the system to only schedule Due Dates from Monday to Friday.

Once updated, this will automatically calculate a Due Date for any test. This happens automatically as you are creating new samples and tests. Note: you can still adjust the Due Date if the calculated date needs to be updated for any reason.

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.