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We talk a lot about data collected for new projects and grid improvements, but there's another type of data that's critical for the health of our workflows. The data we collect about our processes is a powerful tool to help us do our jobs better and find greater purpose in our work.
Sometimes the pain of the distribution industry and the complications of the pole attachments process muddy the waters when it comes to the real impact our teams have. But the ability to see that impact (not just theoretically connect the dots) is the difference between loving our jobs and dreading Mondays.
Tracking things like user actions, time stamps, and job changes can both help you improve your services and demonstrate the good your team does in the world. Here are some things to keep in mind when looking at this data:
Measurement is necessary for job satisfaction. Immeasurement is one of the Three Signs of a Miserable Job. Project managers and supervisors can use these features to reward and recognize staff and help bring visibility to the impact users have on the services you provide.
Data doesn’t lie (but sometimes it doesn’t tell the whole story). Tracking all changes in your projects allows your team to get to the bottom of issues and bottlenecks quickly. But it’s important to take the whole picture into account when resolving those same issues and bottlenecks. Some of your staff will naturally gravitate toward cleanup work (which takes a long time, is messy, and will look like they have lower productivity), while others grind away on the low-hanging fruit. A healthy team needs diversity and it will be up to you to use tracking/reporting to provide feedback and coaching to make your projects and staff reach their full potential!
Timely Feedback is crucial to growth. Use integrated feedback to provide relevant comments (or better yet, questions) to staff instead of just cleaning up their messes. “Teach a man to fish” and watch how your new staff grow before your eyes.
Reach out to Aaron (abashore@katapultengineering.com) and our consulting team to get started with these tools!
Attribute History
Katapult Pro’s real-time engine utilizes attribute history to store and display the changes to attributes over time. These attributes cover items such as:
Location (lat/long)
Field completion/time buckets
Make Ready Status or Type of Work
Pole Loading Results or Load Case
Permit Status
And much more. The attribute history can be found and expanded in the Node Information panel of Katapult Pro Maps.
Attribute history allows designers, engineers, and project managers to gain full visibility of changes to a job over time. You can view what attribute was changed, who changed it, what it changed from (and to), and when it was changed.
Additionally, each attribute change can lead to specific, in-app feedback for the user who made the change. We believe that this feedback is absolutely critical to growing new staff to have a maximum positive impact on your workflows and the communities you serve.
Action Tracking
A new feature being released in 2025 (LIVE 1/8/25) is Action Tracking. Action Tracking is a way that you can tie Attribute History to steps in your workflow. This is used to drive staff review and development, feedback, proficiency reports, billing, and project health/KPIs.
For example, we use Actions Tracking to understand who completed how much work in a given week to recognize and reward staff. We look at steps in our engineering processes, such as:
Pre-design
Data Collection
Photo Processing
Annotation/Tracing
Make Ready Design
Pole Loading Analysis
Permits
Delivery
You can even create Action Tracking reports based on historical attribute changes/statuses. While using this to look backwards is a bit fuzzier than using it to set up clear reporting moving forward, there is still a lot of power in looking back at trends and historical timelines for different parts of your workflow.
Give us a shout (support@katapultengineering.com) to start setting up Action Tracking for your team!
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