New in v1.5: Search Posts, Photo Comments, and More

We’ve been toiling behind the scenes for a while now to respond to feedback from our Builder community -- and today we are excited to announce the release of a much-improved BuildBook, complete with new features, bug fixes, and a variety of performance upgrades. Don’t worry: we’re promising, as always, to keep it simple and befitting our mantra: everything you need, and nothing you don’t.

First up, Search and Filter. Inside your Project, at the top of the feed, you’ll see a search bar and a filter icon.

Search works just like other apps you use: type in a word or two, tap “Search” on the keyboard, and BuildBook will return a list of results that match. It looks through the post text as well as its comments, document names, and tags. Search is best used when you’re looking for that one, specific post from a week or so ago that you just know had a certain word.

Now, Filters work a little differently. Maybe you’re about to sit down with your plumbing sub (or maybe you are that plumber) and want to review only the posts tagged “Plumbing” throughout the whole project. Tap the filter, add “Plumbing” as the Category Tag, and boom, your Project feed will be reduced to only Posts containing that tag. You can add as many tags to the filter as you want, and the feed will only display posts that contain all of the selected tags.

The most important thing about the Filter: it only works if you’re tagging your Posts. So when creating a new Post for your Project, tag it liberally to ensure you can find quickly it later.

Filter is made all the more powerful by your ability to now create and delete category tags.

As before, every project starts with our master list of construction categories, but now you’ve got the power to personalize the list to your specific project’s needs. Just like location tags, you can add/delete category tags in the Project Settings menu, or when creating a new post.

Ok, next up -- we’re personally pumped about this -- add photos to your comments.

Yup: when looking at a Post, if you tap to create a comment (see: the floating orange button), you can attach up to ten photos to it. Great for spitballing inspiration, boasting before/after shots, or closing out a conversation with, “See? It’s done!”

BuildBook is also better, faster, stronger and cleaner than ever before with a series of nano-fixes. Most notably, we tweaked how much data we’re pulling down at once, so your projects will load more quickly. This is great for when you’re building a concrete bunker in the middle of nowhere and your phone’s only got two bars of service. Aside from that, you’ll notice other visual polish like a new Project nav bar, updated documents, tidier icons, and the like.

Stay tuned for a couple more big announcements in the coming weeks. And, as usual, don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions, comments, feedback, ideas, concerns, or just to vent. We know, it’s hard out there.

Happy building,
Carson and Ryan