As Catenda is a place for storing, viewing and collaborating on project information, most activity that has occurred can later be extracted again so people can continue working with the information that has been submitted locally.
This article explains about the different ways information can be extracted from a project.
In this article you will find information about exporting the following information:
Models - Topics- Documents - Members - Notifications
Why export
Both project owners and participants will often want to keep their data after a project ends so they can continue to access it.
Data submittal
Project data can be required at any point in the project.
Phase change
When a project changes phase between either the planning, design or construction phases this can be a moment when the data is required to be extracted.
Pehaps the project is put on hold or perhaps a new project is created with different parties involved.
Reporting to governmental institutions
During the project governmental institutions may make inquiries to the project.
At the end of the project, governments often require relevant project information to be submitted.
Tendering
Click here to read more about preparing a document submission base for a tender.
Data archival
Laws created in collaboration with standardisation institutions often require project material to be stored by the responsible party for a period of time.
The amount of time that documentation is required to be stored is often longer than the construction period and is often measured in years or decades rather than months.
What project material includes is often percieved differently by different parties.
An example can be product and systems documentation which in some cases is required to be stored on the owners servers, the servers of the main contractor or by a solution offered by the government all depending on the circumstance of the project.
Project termination
When a project ends the license is often kept for a period to give the different parties time to export the project data.
When the license is terminated access to the project is revoked (even our access).
As long as the owner of the project is a Catenda client we guarantee that the data exists on our servers, even after the project has ended and members loose access.
By contract, should the project owner stop their relationship with Catenda the data is guaranteed to remain on our servers for up to three years.
The project is recoverable as long as it is on our servers.
Archive
An archiving solution is available where the project remains available as a frozen project with only a few members that have read only access.
Export of models - 2 ways
There is an export button for models. Here you can download the latest revisions for every model in one export. This is the easiest way to use if you only need the latest revision of the models.
Enter a model and click on the download button for every revision. This is the easiest way to download all the revisions of all the models.
Previous revisions
The best way to export previous revisions of a model is to click on the model name and click on the download button for each revision in the right information panel.
Export of topics - 3 Ways
BCF - Open standard that can be used by other programs. This option can be hard to use for those who are not used to the file format. Here you do not have proof of downloaded date but each file contains information about when the topic was made. With this format you are guaranteed to get the most information possible.
Excel - I do not recommend the Excel export since it exports the least amount of information
PDF - This export option can be good to use if you want an export option that is easily readable and accessible for most people. Here you also get the download date of the set of documents which can be important for reporting to authorities. BCF still has the most information and is the best to use if you want to open the topics up again in the future.
Export of documents
Documents can be downloaded with the download documents button.
Collections
If only a subset of documents needs to be exported collections are the best way to share information as a public link can be created so external parties can download the documents, even without a Catenda account.
Desktop connector
You might want to use the Catenda Desktop Connector to expedite this process.
The Desktop Connector lets you periodically download the latest project documents to your local system. It downloads documents faster and downloads them one by one minimizing the risk of download failure even further.
One drawback could be that documents will end up on your system unzipped, therefore taking up more space.
Deleted documents
Be sure to also search for "deleted" so you can find all deleted documents and export these as well if desired. Keep in mind that this is language specific and might be a different search word in your language.
It is recommend to download smaller numbers of documents at a time since it can take longer for large file sizes. Breaking up the downloads reduces the chance for anything going wrong in the download process.
Previous revisions
The best way to export previous revisions of a document is to select the document and click on the download button for each revision in the right information panel.
Export of members information
Member access
Models
This is the same as document access
Topics
In the settings of a topic board all members that have access to the topic board are displayed.
Save a screenshot of this access to save it.
Access required: Full access to the topic board
Folders
Export the access overview to save a copy of which members and which teams have access to the different folders in the project.
Access required: Administrator
Documents
Specific access can be granted to documents.
In the right menu of a document revision the members that have access to the document can be seen.
Take a screenshot of this menu to save it.
Account information
Click here to read more about exporting account information including usernames and emails.
Export of notifications - 2 ways
Take a screenshot of the project notification page to save the notifications.
By default 10 notifications per page are displayed.
With thousands of notifications it can take a long time to caputure each page.
The limit filter can be used to display more notifications per page so fewer screenshots are required. Potentially a single screenshot is even enough in this case.Since screenshot text cannot be searched project owners often add a dummy administrator account to the project that has project specific emails summaries enabled.
At the end of the project these emails can then be delivered together with the rest of the project data.