Interior design projects are complex, so one of our main jobs here at Design Manager is to make them easier for you to manage. We’re sort of obsessed with it, to be honest, and our latest updates to Pro Cloud show it.
The specifications screen is one of the most popular features in Design Manager; designers open it over a million times a year! So we took a hard look at ways to streamline it and make it easier for you, knowing that even small changes can save you thousands of hours a year of work. Here’s an overview of what’s new:
Filters
Your design projects are big, sometimes running into thousands of line items on the specifications screen. Not only is it hard to find what you’re looking for, but it can get a little sluggish with so much information on the screen.
We built two new filters to help you quickly find what you’re looking for. First, you’ll be able to filter by location to easily see everything related to the Kitchen, the Bedroom, or any other location in your project. Second, you’ll be able to filter by Sales Category to see all the Lighting or Furniture you’ve specified, for example.
Cleaner Default View
The specifications window had a lot of columns on it, and while that helps you to manage the most complex projects, they are often not used and are blank. We added a Sales Category column to help you see what type of item you’re looking at, and removed others like Group/Name, Plan #, Location Code, Spec #, Inactive, Complete.
You can still see these columns by choosing Advanced View, but for the vast majority of designers, the new Default view is cleaner and more useful.
Create Proposals, Invoices, and PO/WOs
Ever wish you could create a proposal or invoice directly from the spec window? Now you can! Select multiple items and click the new Create button for the ability to create proposals, invoices, purchase orders, and work orders without having to leave the spec area. This alone will save our designers thousands of hours a year!
Lots of small improvements
- When creating items, the image will now automatically copy over to the first component, so you won’t have to upload it twice anymore.
- Some lesser-used functions on the spec window are now consolidated under intuitive menus. The Add From menu contains Quick Add, Inventory, Catalog, and Group and the More button now contains Task, Store in Catalog, Transfer, and Export.
- The Task and Appointment window will now be turned off by default, so it won’t appear automatically when you open Design Manager.
- The Inventory List report can now show images.
