By Patricia McIlwraith
ConSol Product Owner
Yarris Technologies

ConSol integrations drive automation

ConSol construction software replaces labour intensive, paper-based systems, providing visibility into every aspect of work orders, deliverables and field service provider performance. Our mobile and desktop enabled platform centralises and integrates information, providing a single source of truth. ConSol is designed to manage complex subcontractor processes across the construction, finance, compliance and project tracking processes.

ConSol’s system integrations create powerful ways to combine data from different systems to provide automation, reporting and efficiency benefits. ConSol provides many points of integration. We enable data imports and exports via file transfers of information and we share a suite of APIs for the real-time two-way transfer of data between ConSol and other systems. Some examples of these integrations are SAP, Appian, Tableau, PowerBi and Microsoft Dynamics.

SAP

ConSol sends daily payment request information to the payment system of Australia’s largest telco, Telstra. Requests include details of the payments to be made, including vendor, accounting codes, payment amount and payment terms. Response files are returned to ConSol confirming requests will proceed successfully to a payment, and which payments were issued. The financial checks and controls in the ConSol pre-processing stages ensure this vital function is conducted accurately and reliably, ensuring hundreds of subcontractors receive timely payment for the completed work, supporting the vital retention of key providers.

Gateway

ConSol’s Gateway functionality enables users to easily import and export information to and from ConSol:

• The bulk order importer creates new project views and adds new scoped orders, according to rules defined in configurable templates. An integration used by Appian for the last three years created over 80,000 Telstra orders for a specific schedule of work. The tool facilitates order creation in ConSol with minimal human intervention, progressing orders as far as possible based on the completeness and accuracy of the provided data. In the past, a skilled data entry operator could create, categorise, scope, allocate and transmit an order to a supplier in under 2 minutes. Gateway enables 100 orders to be created and transmitted in the same period of time, without any need for human intervention.
• The Gateway document importer enables all appropriate documentation to be added to orders in bulk. This is handled by import of multiple attachments to individual orders or through an automated process that retrieves documents from AWS and allocates them to the relevant orders. This reduces manual handling errors and minimises the risk of loss, error or misfiling. Large documents are automatically uploaded and attached to orders with minimal human involvement.
• The Virtual Customer order importer enables suppliers to upload orders from customers who do not use ConSol, so that they can manage all their work from within their ConSol portal. This ensures suppliers can standardise their work processes with all orders presented in the same format with the same operational actions required, minimising staff confusion and training requirements.
• Claims and variation import templates enable bulk update of item information to support change requests. For complex orders requiring multiple schedules of rates items to be specified and claimed, the ability to bulk upload significantly reduces the time supplier users have to spend before submitting a claim or variation request.
• Configurable export templates enable a range of data sets to be extracted to a spreadsheet format for analysis or to transfer to other applications. This provides both customers and suppliers the ability to interact directly with ConSol data for their own business purposes.
  For the newer import templates, files can be manually loaded or delivered to an AWS S3 bucket for automatic processing.

ConSol APIs

ConSol APIs enable real-time access to information, directly from the ConSol database. APIs extract and update order and item details, for document exchanges and provide transactional updates of cost and time. Our APIs update our customer’s systems, and drive the exchange of information between ConSol Desktop and ConSol Mobile, ensuring they are performance, current and relevant.

Datamart

Consol’s Datamart extracts simplified, user-friendly data sets for data lakes and warehouses for use with BI tools like Tableau or Power BI. These fully described relational data sets enable our advanced data interrogators to create detailed and complex reports and dashboards, integrating ConSol data with information from other systems. This puts the power in the hands of users and enables analyses from longitudinal perspectives, incorporating all relevant data from disparate systems. Reporting gurus use this information to search for less evident trends to drive better operational and financial outcomes.