Help centre · Projects
Connections
Open this screen in Saral/projects/connections
Your own sign-ins to the systems your work lives in — Outlook, Smartsheet, Aconex — and what they bring into Saral. You connect once; every night Saral reads the sheets and projects your sign-in can open and files what it finds on the project's drawing register, Design Desk and canvas, where everyone with Projects access sees it. The connection is yours — nobody else can use it or see it. The data is the account's. An Admin or the Owner also sees the overview: who is connected to what, what each source produced, and which sources nobody connected can open.
You enter
- Connect: press Connect on a provider card and sign in with your own account at that provider. Saral keeps a sealed token against your user id — never your password.
- Link a source to a project: pick a sheet or an Aconex project your sign-in can reach and say which Saral project it feeds. Linking is done once, for the account, by anyone who may write the drawing register.
- Disconnect when you leave a project or change accounts — the next connected person who can open the same source takes over the nightly read.
Saral fills in
- The status of each connection — Connected, Sign in again, Not connected — with the account it is signed in as, when it was last used and the last error if there was one.
- The sources your sign-in can reach (sheets with their workspace, Aconex projects with their organisation), and which of them are already linked to a Saral project.
- Every night, for each linked source: a read with the account's own connection first where one exists, then the connected person whose last read worked most recently. What was read lands on the project's drawing register, Design Desk CAIs, Drawing compare and the canvas — nothing is per person downstream.
- For the Admin tier and the Owner: who is connected to what, what each sign-in reaches, what each source produced last night, and the sources no one connected can open — named, never a silent zero.
It produces
- Rows on the project's drawing register and Design Desk from the sheets and Aconex projects your sign-in brings in — and, from a ticked tracker sheet, its instructions, RFIs, Employer's Requirements, samples and order list on their own registers — read by every Projects person on the project's own screens.
- A record on each linked source of how it was last read (the account's connection, a named person's, or nobody — and why) and how many rows were filed or not filed.
- Nothing per person: a connection produces data for the project, never a private copy for the person who connected.
What this page is for
Each person on a project has different access at Smartsheet and Aconex — their own sheets, their own projects. Rather than one account-wide sign-in that reaches everything, each person connects their own, from here, without needing Settings. The page opens from the plug icon at the top right of every Projects page, which also shows your sign-ins at a glance with Connect and Sign in again — the page itself has four sections: My sign-ins, Sources, Everything Saral can see and, for the Admin tier and the Owner, Team. Saral then reads what those sign-ins can open and files it where the project's record already lives. The connection is yours: your token is sealed against your user id and no one else can read it, use it in the browser, or see it. The data is the account's: what is read lands on the drawing register, Design Desk and canvas for everyone with Projects access.
Connecting
Press Connect on a card and sign in at the provider with your own account. Smartsheet uses Saral's registered app; Aconex uses the sign-in client an Admin entered once on Settings → Aconex, and until that is entered the card says so instead of failing. A connection that stops working (a changed password, access removed) shows 'Sign in again' with the last error; nothing it fed is lost, and another connected person's sign-in takes over the nightly read in the meantime.
Your OneDrive as a source
Much of a team's working material lives in each person's OneDrive — and the desktop folder OneDrive syncs — long before it reaches a site library. Connect OneDrive here with your Microsoft work sign-in (the same registration the account's SharePoint connection uses, read-only), browse your drive and link a folder to a project, saying what it holds: a Drawing Release Schedule, a QHP register, a client application, a meeting log, a GDN / DPN / CAI costs / RFI tracker — or the drawings for checking, the Employer's Requirements, the client's comments, your checker's markups, instructions, or the Aconex register export. The nightly readers then read the newest workbook in that folder exactly as they read a SharePoint folder, and the drawing check, the comments collector and the Aconex feed open a drawing folder the same way — each with your sign-in, folder by folder, while a SharePoint library keeps the account's connection; if you disconnect, the link stays and says no one connected can open it until you sign in again. Saral never looks in anyone's OneDrive by itself — auto-discovery keeps personal drives out — and overnight reading obeys the same project list as everything else.
Linking a source to a project
A source — a Smartsheet sheet, an Aconex project — is linked once, for the account, by anyone who may write the drawing register (the same permission as filing a drawing by hand). Linking says 'this sheet feeds that project', nothing more: it is not sharing, and it does not give anyone else your access. Each night Saral chooses one connection that can open the source — the account's own first where one exists, then the connected people, most recently successful first — and records which it used. When nobody connected can open a source, the source says so on the overview; it never stops quietly.
Everything Saral can see
Linking one sheet by hand would never find the next one, so Saral looks for itself. Every night each connection lists what it can reach — one call per connection — and every sheet or Aconex project becomes one row, however many people can open it. A sheet is only opened when it is new or has changed since the last look; its column titles tell Saral what kind of sheet it is (rules first, a short AI read only when no rule answers, flagged 'could not tell' when neither can), and its name prefix tells Saral the project. Where the project's packages match the name, the package is guessed too and the package's design manager is told once. You tick the sheets Saral should read; a tick creates the same link a hand link would, and the nightly read files what it finds exactly as before. Nothing is read until somebody ticks it.
The overview
Whoever holds the Smartsheet or Aconex connect permission — the Admin tier and the Owner — sees an account-wide aggregate on the same page: each person and provider with their status and what their sign-in reaches, each linked source with how it was read last night and how many rows were filed, and the sources no one can open. It is never a view as another person: the Owner sees sources and results, not a person's mailbox, and never a token.
Who sees what
Everyone with Projects access opens this page and sees their own connections and sources. Linking and unlinking a source needs the drawing-register write (QS, Project Manager, Contracts Manager, Design Manager, Document Controller and above). The overview needs the connect permission (Admin tier and Owner). What the nightly read produces is seen by every Projects person on the project's own screens, as before — nothing here widens or narrows that.
Where next
The drawing register on Site → Design (/projects/site?tab=design) and the Design Desk for what the read brought in; the canvas (/projects/canvas) for the package it moved; Settings → Smartsheet and Settings → Aconex for the account-level connections an Admin keeps.
Next screen: /projects/canvas
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