Here’s what’s new.

We’re always looking for new ways to improve. Learn more about the latest Concora updates here.

Sustainable Filters Added for Granular Search; Sustainability Declarations and Data Sheets Added — 08/06/2020

As much as 50% of new commercial construction projects in the United States are Green Building Initiatives. Manufacturers need to make it easy for A&D customers to be able to quickly search, select, and specify sustainable building products. If not, the customer will leave.

The update provides enhanced sustainability search refinement filters along with the ability to quickly manage and publish important sustainability content such as EPDs, HPDs, and more. These are then presented in search results along with the other critical technical content such as BIM, CAD, and specifications.

Concora's Submittal Generator Tool — 11/21/19

A submittal is one of the main forms of written communication between AECs, Vendors, Manufacturers, and Owners designed to state intent to purchase, directed queries, and other communication that requires a formal response from the receiving party. Creating a submittal on a manufacturer’s website is a very strong indication of the AEC user’s intent to purchase products from that manufacturer.

The Submittal Generator allows AEC users to select products and their attachments, edit/input project data, and export that data in a zip file. The export contains a cover sheet for the submittal package, displaying all project information and the products that are a part of the submittal as well as the file attachments that were selected to comprise the submittal. AECs can then seamlessly import their document into other widely-used product management systems.

Updates to “Featured” Sorting — 9/3/19

“Featured” sorting is a custom feature that allows BPMs to sort products in a specific order on the Design Studio as dictated by an attribute created on the Design Manager. The value attached to said attribute would dictate how the product was sorted on the Design Studio when sort by “Featured” was selected (e.g. a product with the “Featured” attribute attached and the value of 001 would appear above a product with the “Featured” attribute attached and the value of 002).

Originally, when a user searched when “Featured” was selected, we would first filter the featured value attached to the products, so that the searching was filtered by that value.

We have changed this so that if a user searches when “Featured” is selected, the actual search query will override the Featured value.

Events Log Added to Insights; Request For Quote/Contact Sales Rep — 7/10/19

Events Log

The Events section is a new part of Insights. It allows for data that we capture in lead exports to be displayed in the Manager, including downloads, views, referrals, and searches. Events has an intuitive and user-friendly interface that can be filtered and sorted to the user’s specifications.

Request For Quote/Contact Sales Rep

Request A Quote and Contact Sales Rep allows AEC users to directly contact the BPM from the Design Studio in two new ways. However, these features are not going to be released to everyone out of the box. The BPM must request that this feature be added to their Design Studio.

Contact Sales Rep allows the AEC user to send a message that could be about a line of products or any questions or thoughts about the manufacturer or any other questions the AEC user may have for the BPM. The button is present on each page of a user’s Design Studio in the header. Messages will appear in the Design Manager’s new Messages section, and a copy of the messages will be sent to a designated email address.

The Request A Quote button is only present on the product details page and allows AEC users to contact the BPM about a specific product. Additionally, the AEC user is invited to enter project information about the project as well. Like the messages received from Contact Sales Rep, the messages submitted from Request A Quote will be sent to the messages section in the Manager and to the email addresses the BPM submitted for messages to be forwarded to.

Dashboard Revamp; New Dropzone and Assets Section; Activity Log — 5/23/19

Dashboard Revamp

The old Dashboard has been replaced by our new UI. The Dashboard is broken into two sections: traffic and events. Traffic has data related to the amount of users accessing the Design studio broken into visitors, sessions, loyalty and conversion. Events shows the total amount of events that have occurred on a user’s Design Studio from page views, product views, referrals, searches, downloads and clicks. Both sections have universal filters that are based off the AEC user’s location, industry, and occupation.

New Dropzone and Assets Section

The dropzone on the product details page of the Manager has been transformed into a completely new UI/UX that is more informative, functional, and reliable and has been given its own section on the product details page titled the Assets section.

To upload a file attachment, you can now drag and drop any number of attachments into the product details page. Time remaining will be displayed in a progress bar in the lower right-hand corner. After uploading, you can sort your attachments by clicking on the headers’ file name, date added, file type and size.

Return of the Activity Log

The activity log was removed from the leads profile page during the Analytics release in April 2019. It has been brought back and tracks all product views and downloads that an AEC user has performed.

Customizable Features; Login/Registration; Bug Fix 2 — 2/26/19

Customizable Features

The appearance of the Design Studio can now be customized to match the BPMs’ brand colors and preferences. New customizable elements include header and footer color and links, favicon, bulleted product features, sorting rules, and product feature callouts.

Login/Registration

In order to download product information, AEC users must log into the Design Studio either by manually entering their email address and password or by signing in through their Google or Linkedin accounts.

Bug Fix: Download Icons

The Download icons were accidentally removed due to a fix for another issue on Design Studio. The icons have been returned to both the hybrid view page on the search results page and the product details page.

Processing Times: Revit Imports and Product Publishing — 8/20/18

This update improves the import time of Revit files, including single files and batch uploads, and allows Manager users to publish products to the Design Studio faster.

Revit Imports

New Import Times On Average

Users can import a single family RFA and have it finish processing in 15 seconds (on average).
Users can import single multiple family RFA’s/RVTs and have it finish processing in under 25 seconds
(on average).
Users can simultaneously import multiple single family RFA’s and have them finish importing in 40
seconds (on average).
Users can simultaneously import multiple family RFA’s/RVT’s in 1.5 minutes (on average).

Old Import Times On Average

Users could import a single family RFA and have it finish processing in under 1 minute (on average).
Users could import a single multiple family RFA’s/RVTs in 1.5 minutes (on average).
Users could simultaneously import multiple single family RFA’s in 2-2.5 minutes (on average).

Product Publishing

New Publishing Times On Average

Users can publish a single family RFA in under 10 seconds (on average).
Users can publish single multiple family RFA’s/RVTs in under 30 seconds (on average).
Users can simultaneously publish multiple single family RFA’s in under 35 seconds (on average).
Users can simultaneously publish multiple family RFA’s/RVT’s in under one minute (on average).

Old Publishing Times On Average

Users can publish a single family RFA in under 2 minutes (on average).
Users can publish single multiple family RFA’s/RVTs in 2.5-3 minutes (on average).
Users can simultaneously publish multiple single family RFA’s in 3 minutes (on average).
Users can simultaneously publish multiple family RFA’s/RVT’s in 5 minutes (on average).