The correspondence is one of the most valuable parts of any project. In all phases of the project, a major part of the activities is exchanged in form of correspondence, the archive of which is of great importance when making a connection between these correspondences and other activities of the project. In fact, a project must practically relate the history of all correspondence with the activities executed, in an efficient way. The PATS software (Projects Automation System) has been designed and produced by AFAM Group to achieve this purpose.
Abilities of PATS
- Recording various types of input, output, and internal correspondence.
- Registering and separating the correspondences based on each project and based on the type (i.e. letter, Email, minutes, report, etc.).
- Categorizing and displaying the correspondences based on the technical and engineering units, different issues and fields defined in any project.
- Categorizing the correspondences based on different stages of the project schedule and activities.
- Automatic numbering of the correspondences based on the coordination procedure of the project.
- Defining different positions in the project including project secretary, secretariat, document control supervisor, project manager, supervisors of different departments, and other agents and authorities that are defined through the definition of the project flow.
- Providing personal dashboards for clients and users of the project.
- Forwarding the correspondences to other agents of the project with pre-defined access level (authorization).
- Forwarding the correspondences with different labels such as "to take action", "to inform", "to pursue", ….
- Controlling the referrals and authorizations (access levels) based on the project organizational chart.
- Defining the project's structure, its roles, and how the permission of referrals is granted.
- Defining the matrix of project correspondences and introducing the positions that are allowed to send and receive correspondences.
- Ability to recognize user permission for outgoing correspondences.
- Defining and identifying the other companies involved in the project including the main contractors and subcontractors, supervision system, clients, counselor.
- Searching and filtering the correspondences based on different information fields defined in the project.
- Draft letters produced by the users of the project.
- Circulating and referring the draft letters in order to obtain the approvals.
- Producing the drafts in Word or any format approved in the project and automatically completing the letter information.
- Inserting electronic signature.
- Connecting with Outlook in order to recording the sent emails in the software.
- Archiving the documents and transferring them from the dashboard to the archive and dead filing (archiving) of the correspondences.
- Recording the correspondence files and attachments in all formats loading them on the FTP server.
- Remote access to the corresponding system via the Web module.
- Marking, registering the degree of priority, classifying.
- Establishing a thematic relationship among the letters of a project (referent, pursuant to, etc.).
- Accessing the WBS and projects activities aiming to the establish a thematic relationship between the correspondences and the activities.
- Recording and describing the link between the type of correspondences and different subjects at different levels of the project.
- Establishing a relationship between the technical and engineering documents and the correspondences.
- Searching the correspondences based on the activities and technical documents of the project.
- Establishing a thematic relationship with activities of project such as hold activities, sending the engineering transmittals, comment sheets, reply sheets, technical queries, purchase phases.
- Tracing the correspondences from the time of issue until the closure of actions. (A to Z)
- Registering the minutes details separately.
- Accessing and observing the correspondences directly via other software products of AFAM Group (e.g. EDMS or PPMS) without needing to use the Automation software.
- Sending notes for different users.
- Presenting personal calendar page to observe or define the events.
- Providing a personal page for each user.
- Sending the correspondences via email.
- Providing a notification panel to alarm and remind the events, referrals, ongoing letters, and other necessary information in the dashboard to the users.
- Delivering different reports from the correspondences including the list of letters, ongoing letters, actions registered on letters, indicator list, correspondence communication, technical communication, and other various outputs in accordance with the authorizations (access levels).
- Deriving output from the produced reports in Excel and PDF formats.
- Importing old letters of the project via Excel software.