RedTeam Flex has a rebuilt Submittals experience, currently in beta, that replaces the legacy submittals tool with a faster setup process and clearer tracking of who owes the next action. This article explains what the new experience does, what to check before you turn it on, and how to enable it on a project.
Using the new experience is optional. You decide project by project whether to switch, and the legacy experience is not going away.
What's new
The new experience covers the full submittal lifecycle in one place, from building the log to issuing the official response.
Build your log from a spec book. Upload a specification book and RedTeam Flex identifies submittal requirements and groups them by specification section. You review each extracted item side by side with the source document and confirm it before it is added to your log. You can also create items manually or import them from another project.
Track everything in one grid. Every submittal item on the project lives in a single list you can search, sort, filter, group, and customize with pinned and reordered columns. Your layout is saved automatically. The Court column shows who owns the next action on each item.
Build reusable review workflows. Each submittal has a configurable workflow with a submission step, as many review steps as you need, and an official response. You can set a default workflow for the whole project, or copy a workflow from one item and apply it to others in bulk.
Review and respond in one document. Files from you and from the submitter are merged into a single document. Reviewers apply a stamp with their response, then the submittal manager finalizes the official response, distributes it, and tracks acknowledgement of receipt.
Collaborate with the right people. Comment on items or documents and tag teammates. Comments marked confidential are never visible outside your company. A full history records every action taken on an item.
Automate follow-up. Configure reminders to go out a set number of days before or after submission and review due dates.
Control access. Five access levels — None, Viewer, Coordinator, Manager, and Administrator — replace the granular permission settings used by the legacy experience.
Before you enable it
Requirements
You can only turn on the new experience if both of these are true:
The project has no submittals in it. If any submittals already exist on the project, the option is unavailable and RedTeam Flex will tell you so. To use the new experience on that project, the existing submittal data would have to be removed first — so in practice, choose a project that has not started submittals yet.
The project is in Request status. The Submittals tab appears on projects in Request status.
What to know before you commit
Enabling the new experience cannot be undone.
Once you turn it on for a project, that project cannot be switched back to the legacy submittals experience. Be certain before you enable it on an active job.
Also worth knowing before you decide:
Legacy submittals are not carried over. There is no migration from the legacy experience into the new log. If you need the submittals already on a project, keep working that project in the legacy experience.
Legacy submittal views are hidden automatically. Once the new experience is on, the legacy submittal views and configuration options for that project are no longer shown.
Commitments are not part of the new experience yet. If your process depends on linking submittals to commitments, stay on the legacy experience for that project for now.
Your spec book needs to be uploaded again. A specification book uploaded in Plans & Specs is not available to submittal extraction. Upload it directly in the extraction tool.
Because the switch is permanent, enable the new experience on a new project first. That gives your team room to learn the workflow without affecting a job already in progress.
How to enable the new experience
You need the Project Preferences permission to do this.
Open the project.
Go to Project Setup.
Go to Project Preferences.
Find the Submittals section.
Select Use new submittals experience.
A Saved confirmation appears, and the preference is replaced with text confirming the project is now using the new submittals experience.
Go to Project Setup:
Go to Project Preferences:
Find Submittals section and click Use new submittals experience:
If the project already has submittals in it, the option is still shown, but the Use new submittals experience button is greyed out and a message appears next to it explaining that the new experience cannot be enabled because submittal data already exists in the project.
What to do after you enable it
Work through these in order before your team starts using the log.
Add everyone to Team Members first. The new experience pulls the people you can assign to submittals from the project's Team Members tab. Anyone not listed there — including subcontractors, architects, engineers, and owners — cannot be assigned to a submission or review step. This works differently from the legacy experience, so add your contacts to Team Members before you build any workflows.
Review access levels. On the project's Submittals settings, each team member is given a suggested access level based on their role. Check these before anyone starts working. Two things to keep in mind:
You can raise someone's access level on a specific project, but you cannot set it below the default for their role. Role defaults are set per role in Configuration. Set role defaults to the lowest level a person would need, then upgrade per project.
External reviewers and submitters need at least Viewer to see their items.
Set a default project workflow. Configure the review steps you want every new submittal to inherit, so items arrive ready to send instead of needing manual setup each time. You can rename and reorder review steps and add as many as you need. The submission and official response steps cannot be removed.
Build your log. Upload a specification book to extract submittal requirements, import items from another project, or add items manually.
Staying on the legacy experience
You do not have to switch. Any project where you have not enabled the new experience continues to use the legacy submittals experience exactly as before, and there is no deadline by which you must move over. Because the setting is per project, you can run new projects on the new experience while your in-progress jobs finish out on the legacy one.