How FastDraft is supported, maintained and developed

This article provides answers to frequently asked questions in relation to FastDraft is supported, maintained and developed.

This articles contains the following:

• Does your helpdesk support operate from 09:00 – 17:30 Monday to Friday as a minimum?
• Do you provide a staging and sandpit environment to support testing of system changes, upgrades and user familiarisation and if so are these environments identical in functionality to the live production system and with representative test data? Do these test environments include the provision to view the system from different party roles i.e. contractor or client, project manager or engineer, etc.?
• Do you provide and communicate to customers a forward view of system developments and releases, and developments to existing functionality?
• Do maintenance patches and upgrades come with full user documentation?
• Does FastDraft provide users with both general and context-sensitive help information and guidance notes to support both initial familiarisation and then lead users through a process journey i.e. explainer videos, tooltips, product walkthroughs, etc. to guide users.
• Do you provide training on FastDraft to all users prior to system go live, and offer equivalent training for new starters after go live? How do you provide remote delivery of training for clients with a wide geographical distribution of sites and users.
• Do you provide a solution for the periodic back-up of data to prevent data loss? This will include the freezing and back-up of data prior to the implementation of any updates, improvements and changes identified as Major.
• Do you provide configurable email alerts that are automatically generated to users based on events within the project workflows and at specified stages.
• Do you support secure, auditable logs of communications between the user and contractors for the life of the contract and can these communications be retained in line with the customer’s records management policies even if the user is removed from the system. Where a user leaves the project, contract or organisation and a replacement person is added, can this new user be given access to existing communications for that organisation, contract or project.

 

Does your helpdesk support operate from 09:00 – 17:30 Monday to Friday as a minimum?

Our Chief Operating Officer leads our Customer Success Team, managing our help desk and product technicians, supporting users via email, phone or in-app live chat. We provide:

• First-line support to users having difficulty with FastDraft, referring issues relating to individual projects to super-users/local administrators
• Second-line support for issues escalated by Admin users, permitting Admin users to identify urgent issues for faster response

Support is provided from 09:00 – 17:30 Monday to Friday. From 2025 we will be extending helpdesk support to a 24/7/365 model.

Using Zendesk, we track support ticket performance across multiple organisations and communication channels. Support requests are classified by priority. Zendesk sets targets and measures performance for first reply time and total requester wait time.

We provide detailed performance reports and pro-actively monitor performance to ensure alignment with expectations. We use Zendesk and can model your current support arrangements for a seamless transition.

Zendesk’s Customer Support Report is emailed to you in advance of account management meetings.

Our customer support team undertakes Zendesk and NEC accredited training along with ad-hoc consultancy support where needed.

We produce a summary guideline for each enterprise customer’s contracts so our whole team understands our obligations for SLAs, reporting, service management, change management requests, and any other requirements which helps to provide swift resolution to support requests.

Customer satisfaction feedback is requested for all tickets, we also gather quarterly feedback from key account holders, and we poll FastDraft users periodically. All feedback is used to improve FastDraft and the user experience and feeds into our progress reporting.

We use Microsoft Azure Monitor and a third-party platform, Pingdom to monitor system downtime/service degradation. Pingdom monitors page latency/response time and uptime, we typically target 500 milliseconds page load speed and 99.95% uptime. Availability is monitored independently and reported via our public status page. Reports are provided monthly, and SMS and email alerts are issued for unplanned outages.

Do you provide a staging and sandpit environment to support testing of system changes, upgrades and user familiarisation and if so are these environments identical in functionality to the live production system and with representative test data? Do these test environments include the provision to view the system from different party roles i.e. contractor or client, project manager or engineer, etc.?

We provide 3 environments:

• Production – Live environment
• Demo/UAT – Duplicate of live for UAT and testing
• Migration and Pen Test – for security teams to perform penetration testing or testing migrating data

These instances use the same code base as the live environment apart from configuration of features being tested. Data can be replicated as well for testing before deployment.

We provide features for testing and training:

• allowing a user to toggle between different contract roles
• providing a “demo” status on contracts so training data doesn’t pollute reports or interfere with live projects.

We provide a feature to allow Admin users to toggle between party roles when testing or training users so that they can view and demonstrate the system from each party’s perspective without having to log out each time.

Do you provide and communicate to customers a forward view of system developments and releases, and developments to existing functionality?

Future roadmap planning and release management is controlled through our ISO270001 ISMS under Operational Control (ISMS DOC 8) containing change management procedures and contributor’s policy.

Our System Implementation Managers coordinate the management of releases for major updates or bespoke features with customers to ensure clear communications with you.

Our Customer Success Team, provides:

• fortnightly release notes,
• updated user guidance notes
• regular product updates via 1:2:1 meetings with clients
• public webinars about current and new features and their deployment.

Clients can discuss any questions through regular account management meetings and, where appropriate, undertake UAT testing workshops for major releases.

Changes are communicated with customers through release notes which summarise all new features with screenshots and links to the detailed user guidance notes (also accessible within FastDraft), 7 days in advance of release.

All system developments and releases are classified using three-tier versioning methodology (major, minor or patches). All major releases are configurable by each enterprise client and released to UAT instances for testing by the client before deployment.

All minor releases and patch releases are tested internally before release without the need for client testing.

FastDraft maintains a product roadmap based on feedback from its users in accordance with our contributor’s handbook. This feeds into our public roadmap: 

All feature requests are triaged and prioritised.

A user centric approach to our products is embedded in our DNA. We put our customers and end users in the driving seat allowing our products to be shaped by the people who use it. We envisage that our customers and users will play an active role in helping shape our product to fit their needs.

Do maintenance patches and upgrades come with full user documentation?

Maintenance patches and upgrades are fully documented in line with our ISO9001 QMS and ISO270001 ISMS and Operations Security (ISMS-C DOC 12) policy and outlined in release notes with hyperlinks through to support articles (containing detailed explanation and screenshots to aid understanding).

All release notes are accessible directly from within FastDraft from any page (see screenshot):

FastDraft is comprehensively documented with a 200+ page user guide. This ‘FastDraft Handbook’ along with training videos are reviewed fortnightly to identify any changes required to ensure it reflects the current product functionality.

Does FastDraft provide users with both general and context-sensitive help information and guidance notes to support both initial familiarisation and then lead users through a process journey i.e. explainer videos, tooltips, product walkthroughs, etc. to guide users.

• FastDraft provides a comprehensive set of resources for both:
  general product awareness with our FastDraft handbook, full length onboarding videos and webinars, FastDraft eLearning programme, and
• targeted and contextual guidance to support user onboarding with features such as embedded tooltips, contextual warning banners, embedded bite-sized videos for each workflow to guide and educate users, increase feature utilisation, raise awareness of new features, and help drive best practice (see screenshot below).

As an example, the early warning process is supported by a 1,500-word support article, 7-minute bite-sized product video, general NEC early warning videos and EWN FAQs. Equivalent videos and support articles are available for each workflow. When users first visit the early warning registers they will be asked if they wish to watch a short explainer video of the early warning process with links to support articles via tooltips. Additional masterclass videos are also available to help continue their learning on contract management and our product.

FastDraft provides contextual warning banners. The grey “onboarding” warning is dismissible, but the orange “advisory” is not.

FastDraft supports in-app notifications and a notifications centre which delivers non-urgent announcements to help guide users such as:

• product update webinars
• links to refresher training
• product walk throughs
• release notes
• guidance
• in-app learning

FastDraft delivers this contextual content based on user segmentation based on the user’s and their contract attributes (i.e. the user’s role, date their account was created and the forms of contracts they use). For example, NEC bite-sized videos are present to users managing NEC Contracts. Below are screenshots of user’s segmentation to deliver contextual support, messaging, product walk throughs and our embedded contract coaching.

Example of target message for in-app coaching

Example of product walk through of dashboard and RAG notifications

Do you provide training on FastDraft to all users prior to system go live, and offer equivalent training for new starters after go live? How do you provide remote delivery of training for clients with a wide geographical distribution of sites and users.

During initial implementation, full training is provided to all end users along with options for train-the-trainer and admin training for the Admin users.

Users receive authoritative advice from our tutors for virtual and face to face workshops. Our tutors' involvement in the strategic development of our product and the conditions of contract e.g. NEC, JCT. IChemE and FIDIC and hands on experience as practitioners will facilitate an engaging training programme. Their experience of contract management within your industry helps ensure the course delivery is tailored to you.

Our training workshops typically have a strong focus on participative sessions framed around exercises, with break out discussions, and group and syndicate exercises.

We propose that virtual live sessions are split into small bite sized sessions of 1-2 hours and spilt across multiple days or weeks. For ease of planning these session slots would typically be 9:00-11:00 12:00-14:00, and 15:00-17:00, but sessions do not need to be limited to a single day. The exact split of the programme will be decided with you in the implementation phase and tailored to the operational and delegate’s needs. For example, the programme could be grouped by role profile or project lifecycle. The modular nature of the courses and our training packs means that this could be changed to suit you. Sessions can be recorded and delivered via MS Teams.

As a Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) Accredited Training Organisation (ATO) we are required to work to the CITB training standards and are audited and accredited by them every 3 years.

End user training sessions provide a step-by-step walk through of each workflow, reporting, user roles and rights, profile settings and Q&A for an interactive session, and are delivered in 2-hour or 4-hour blocks depending on the ability of the users.

The training for the Admin users has further sessions to include administering FastDraft and how to train other users i.e. train-the-trainer workshops.

We also provide for new starters:

• contextual embedded bite sized video and tooltips
• free monthly public webinars for all users
• pre-recorded get started videos
• webinars for any major releases
• FastDraft accredited 12-part eLearning programmes for end users and Admin users with an online assessment to verify understanding.

Do you provide a solution for the periodic back-up of data to prevent data loss? This will include the freezing and back-up of data prior to the implementation of any updates, improvements and changes identified as Major.

Our Operations Security (ISMS-C-DOC-12) documents our process for system backup and recovery. FastDraft is backed up 3 times a day, backups are retained for 12 years.

Data is frozen and backed up prior to the implementation of any updates, improvements or changes. The data recovery plans are detailed in ISMS-C-DOC-17/a and set out how to fully restore a service in the event of a total loss of an Azure data centre.

Azure Storage replicates the data to protect it from planned and unplanned events ranging from transient hardware failures, network or power outages, massive natural disasters etc. Azure provides the option to choose where to replicate the data.

Our standard configuration provides an RTO of 8 hours and RPO of 8 hours.

As part of the implementation, we will review the back-up strategy, RTO/RPO targets and data retention policies with you, configuring these to your needs.

We offer an enhanced data recovery service with improved RTO/RPO with Microsoft’s Business Critical databases or pools if required.

Do you provide configurable email alerts that are automatically generated to users based on events within the project workflows and at specified stages.

By default, all key users with full delegation under the contract receive an email notification for each contract notice. Email notifications are configurable by workflows across individual contracts or in bulk via master templates by superusers using our workflow editor (see screenshot).

This supports complex logic for email notifications by party, role, etc. with “and/or” logic statements.

Users can control their email notifications via their profile page, but this can be configured so users cannot disable mandatory notifications.

Notifications include the contract name, ID, subject line, type, hyperlink directly to contract notice (if the user has permission) and contact details of our Customer Success Team. Emails can be configured to include additional information including whether a PDF copy of the FastDraft communication is attached.

FastDraft allows admins to create distribution lists for unlicenced users or shared inboxes e.g. send a copy of all notices to a SharePoint folder or to a recipient outside FastDraft. See screenshot for distribution to Microsoft Teams Channel.

Do you support secure, auditable logs of communications between the user and contractors for the life of the contract and can these communications be retained in line with the customer’s records management policies even if the user is removed from the system. Where a user leaves the project, contract or organisation and a replacement person is added, can this new user be given access to existing communications for that organisation, contract or project.

FastDraft allows all users secure and auditable access to their contract communications for the life of the contract. All user activity is tracked and stored within our databases.

Communications are date stamped and associated with an individual user ID, displayed in the user interface, on communications and all registers. Over 50 dedicated communication workflows allow Admin Users to view an audit trail of communications in aggregated registers over the life of the contract or whole project or programme of works.

Further detail is stored in secure logs with information such as IP address, timestamps, etc.
This audit trail is also available via API for sharing with third parties.

Secure access to records is controlled through API end points using access tokens which are decrypted server-side to ensure authentication is valid and access to data strictly controlled.

Communications are retained in line with agreed record management policies even if the user is removed. The contract records are retained and accessible by other users (including replacement staff) as required, either on an ad-hoc basis or by fully assuming the contractual role.

All our data is retained as defined by our ISO27001 Compliance documentation (ISMS-C-DOC-18) which details our standard SLAs including the keeping of client data for the duration of the contract plus 12 years. Data can be retained for longer if requested.

Delegation rights under NEC are managed through a dedicated workflow, see screenshot below:

Our archive/export function allows Admin users to export all contract notices in PDF formats and all registers for an individual contract into a structured zip file. The structure of the zip file maps to the same structure as the main navigation for the contract. Our API allows bulk exporting of data and records. Finally, we provide a “Supplier Admin” role which allows contractors with admin permission to download in bulk their records for their contracts directly.