Published November 14, 2024 . 4 mins read

Today, we’ve rolled out an update that makes managing people in ProNovos faster and more intuitive.

Back in 2018, when ProNovos had only a few pages — and users you could count on one hand — keeping contacts and users separate was a conscious decision. On one hand (whether it’s the same you used to count the users on or the other one — it doesn’t matter), the logic made sense: contacts were external people, and users were internal people. But what happens when you want to grant an external stakeholder user access to view photos? Or when an employee with user access leaves the company and joins a subcontractor you work with?

Giving or revoking someone’s access was a manual effort. You had to create a new account type, fill it out with the same information already in the system, and then go back to delete the old entry. The result? Users sometimes would forget to delete duplicate profiles, especially when creating a user account for an existing contact, leading to redundant information.

Are we human, or are we contacts

With this problem in mind, we focused on a common denominator: it doesn’t matter if a person is a contact or a user — first and foremost, they are a person.

This perspective allowed us to rethink how we handle people’s information in the system. When a person is created, that record stays in the system until it is deleted. Their information, both personal and contact details, might change, but we know it’s the same person, regardless of who they work for or whether they still have access to ProNovos. Now, changing a contact to a user can be done with a single click.

More steps, less time

Previously, creating a new user was a single-screen process. However counterintuitive, we’ve broken it in multiple steps, allowing users to move through the process faster than when they had to fill out all the information in a single modal.

Introducing the multi-step process also enabled us to integrate project access mapping. Now, you don’t need to go through a separate process to tie a new user to projects in each operational area. After defining which areas they have access to, you can assign them to projects right as you create the user.

Multipass

Logging in has always been easy for users affiliated with a single company, but for those juggling multiple contractors in ProNovos, it used to mean keeping track of countless logins and passwords — sometimes even needing new email addresses. And who hasn’t had to add a birth year or current year to their email because all the good names were taken? We felt this issue was contributing to the excess of email addresses, forcing our users to create extra emails they likely use only for logging into the platform.

Now, users can keep a single ProNovos account, no matter how many companies they’re connected to. If you’re linked to more than one company, simply select which one to access upon logging in.

Give the new additions a whirl, and enjoy the peace of mind knowing you’re not going to end up with a digital doppelgänger of your people.