BIM 360 Integration - Activating the Damstra Forms BIM 360 Connector for Subcontractors

Describes the process of activating the BIM 360 Integration when configured for external subcontractors.

To enable the BIM 360 integration please do the following:

1. Ensure that the integration has been set up in BIM 360. 

2, Ensure that you have permission to manage your organisation (talk to your administrator if not).

3. Go to Admin -> Integrations.

3. Select the Activate button next to the BIM 360 integration.

4. If you are not already logged into BIM 360, then it will ask you to do so. Make sure you log in with the integration user set up in BIM 360. Once you do this, it will ask you to Authorize the application. Click "Allow".

5. It will ask you to select a BIM 360 account (if you only have one, it will select it automatically). Once your account is selected you should see a message telling the user that the integration will operate. If you don't see this, then the integration hasn't been set up correctly in BIM 360. If the message is correct, then select Next.

6. You can now enter your upload settings. The first setting is the BIM 360 Folder (e.g. "ACME Contracting Doc Store"). This is where your PDFs will go in BIM 360 and should be provided to you by the BIM 360 administrator.

7. The second setting lets you specify which PDFs you would like to upload to BIM 360. The default is "All PDFs". However, if you wish to specify which PDFs should be uploaded (and which should not), then untick All PDFs.

8. You can now select the PDFs you wish to upload. Note the settings button for each template on the right. You can use these to configure PDF-specific settings.

9. If you click on the PDF settings button, then you can specify:

a) An optional subfolder path for the PDF. Note that each subfolder in the path will be created automatically if it doesn't already exist.

b) The PDF file name format in BIM 360. The options are to use the Template Name and Sequence Number or to use the Short Description. (Note that there are some caveats when using Short Description - see the discussion at the end of this article).

10. Once you've selected and configured all the PDFs to upload, select Next.

11. You can now use the plus button on the right to link your Damstra Forms projects to the corresponding projects in BIM 360.

12. Select the Damstra Forms project and the corresponding BIM 360 project and then select Save.

13. The projects are now linked and selected PDFs from the Damstra Forms project will be uploaded to the BIM 360 project. Select Next once you've added all the projects to link.

14. It then displays a Summary. If you are happy with it, then hit Finish to activate the integration.

15. At this point you have activated your integration. As you create or update forms in Damstra Forms, their PDFs will be uploaded to BIM 360. You can also do the following:

• Use the "Upload Existing PDFs" button to upload pre-existing PDFs
• Use the "Configure" button to change your PDF selection and/or to add or remove linked projects.
• Look at the Uploads tab to see your Upload History.

Caveats when using Short Description as the upload PDF file name in BIM 360

If you use the Short Description as PDF name format in BIM 360, you will need to ensure you manage the following potential issues:

1. If you change the short description then you will need to manually delete the version with the old description in BIM 360.
2. If you have two forms with the same short description in the same subfolder, then they will overwrite each other (you will need to fix one of them and then re-upload both).
3. It is possible to use characters in a short description that are not permitted in a BIM 360 file name. If this occurs, the characters will be changed to underscores. The characters not permitted are: < > : " / \ | ? * ` ¢ ™ $ ®

If you are using short descriptions, you may want to look at using the Autocomplete option on the short description field in the template editor. This allows you to specify a formula to automatically generate the short description, which may be less error-prone than requiring users to manually enter it.