Written by LetsBuild
Last updated November 21, 2023
Very few can deny that 2020 has been a year full of challenges not only for the construction industry but for the entire world. As we approach the last days of a year that many people would like to forget, we have decided to keep you company with our two-part product story.
So after diving into all the new APROPLAN features and improvements, it’s now time to take a closer look at GenieBelt, LetsBuild’s progress and planning app.
In the course of the last twelve months, we have put a lot of work into improving GenieBelt by introducing new features that allow you to see everything on site and successfully complete your projects sooner and cheaper.
Without any further delay, we present to you everything you need to know today about LetsBuild’s GenieBelt app:
GenieBelt – APROPLAN: Same vision, same colours!
As we also mentioned in the first part of our story, GenieBelt and APROPLAN merged in the beginning of 2019 to create a new force in construction technology. A force that will be able to connect the industry by fully digitalising the construction phase.
After two years of tireless effort, we feel that we have come one step closer to our dream. APROPLAN forms can now be attached to GenieBelt tasks making it considerably easier for you to automate the quality controls of each task and always stay on top of any problems that might appear on site.
Read also: Ultimate list of LetsBuild QHSE 2020 product updates (APROPLAN)
The connection between the two apps ensures that you can detect and resolve critical issues much faster than in the past and prevent costly mistakes before they put the progress of your projects and your handovers in danger.
But that’s not all! GenieBelt and APROPLAN are now also sharing the same colours. Like that, our users can enjoy a unified experience when they are working on our apps.
COVID-19 checklists and dashboards to safely reopen and manage your construction sites
The pandemic has created an unprecedented impact on our built environment all over the world. As construction sites open up again, contractors need to find ways to keep their field teams working in a safe manner that adheres to the social distancing rules.
In order to help the industry with this massive project, LetsBuild’s customer success team created certified COVID-19 checklists and dashboards that project managers can use to safely track everything and remotely manage the sites that reopen.
Cross Project is updated and improved
One of the most valuable GenieBelt features is the Cross Project, as it allows you to take your project management to a whole new level.
We have put a lot of effort during this year to improve our Cross Project feature, and today we are confident that we have answered many of your requests and have made it more intuitive and user friendly. Below you can find a detailed breakdown of the most important additions that our team has brought to Cross Project (available on Desktop):
- Company shared filters and views: When you are creating a new view in the Cross Project tab, you can decide whether it’s a user view or a company view: that means you now have the possibility to display either user views or company views, or even both! Thanks to this new feature capability, you can now align your teams much easier, as it will be considerably simple to keep everyone up to date by sharing a specific view that you or your collaborators have created in advance.
- Bulk edit the time of a task: You can now select multiple tasks at the same time, and reschedule them in a few clicks. In other words, you can save a great amount of time by managing all your projects at once, and make large-scale modifications at the push of a button. For instance, you can bulk shift the date of tasks by +3 or -3 days.
- Public holidays: Cross Project has been updated with additional calendars for public holidays from all over the world. In that manner, you can plan ahead and avoid delays by predicting the off-peak periods of your project. Currently, you can take advantage of the following public holiday calendars: Danish, German, British, Polish, French, Belgian (FR and NL), American, Chilean.
- Week numbers optimisation: It’s a small but important update that improves the readability of the Cross Project view. By activating the “week number shown” parameter in your profile, you can have week numbers displayed in the Cross Project view, regardless of how much you have zoomed into your project.
Powerful Excel and MSP integrations are here
At LetsBuild, we understand well how important it is for you to connect all your tools in a single source of truth. That’s why we have put a lot of hours into introducing new powerful integrations to our applications.
In short, here is how you can make the most of your project data by connecting LetsBuild to Excel and MSP:
Excel plugin: Many project managers tell us that they rely on Excel for their planning and that all their reports and updates are done using Excel. But now LetsBuild helps you bring your planning to life and update it automatically. The Excel plugin allows users to download a project from LetsBuild, upload a project from Excel to LetsBuild, and sync projects between Excel and LetsBuild to reflect reality at all times. To make things even easier for you, the plugin will automatically let you know about new releases so that you can effortlessly upgrade to the latest version.
MSP Plugin: Discover how our new MS Project plugin can help you make changes to the project programme and share them with the people on site with just a few clicks. So that you can always have an accurate, shareable live view of your project even if you are not able to be on site on a daily basis.
Custom fields and more language options
In the first part of this product roundup, we referred extensively to the role of custom fields in APROPLAN, LetsBuild’s QHSE app. But custom fields can also be created from GenieBelt mobile users.
Custom fields are new and flexible metadata that you can assign directly to a task, as you create it. More specifically, you can now add new fields, like date or text, and give them the value you want. This allows you to have more details about each task and improve your task filtering process.
Like that, you can eventually gain more control over your tasks and always find the information you want with ease.
But we didn’t stop there! In an effort to make the GenieBelt app accessible to even more people around the world, we have added two new languages. GenieBelt is now available in Polish and Dutch making it easier for field teams and project stakeholders, who speak these languages, to connect with each other and report progress by using our app.
Enhanced backend performance
Backend performance and reliability have always been one of our main priorities and 2020 could be no exception to that. We have invested a lot of time and effort into improving our data security and ensuring a faster backend experience for all of our users.
You are now also able to check and monitor service availability on status.letsbuild.com
We make your feature wishes come true in 2021!
That’s all folks! We hope you enjoyed our two-part 2020 product story and that you are as excited as we are for 2021.
Once again, we want to thank you for your support and your inspiring ideas all these years and to invite you to become a part of this journey by sending us your own product feature wishes and suggestions. You can do it just by clicking below:
From the entire LetsBuild team, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! ♀️
