ComponentOne® VSFlexGrid Pro and VSVIEW Deliver Critical Functionality to Building and Property Data Management Solution

In the real estate industry, building and property data is typically collected and stored in file folders, drawing tubes and loose collections of spreadsheets and PDF documents. The time it takes to search through volumes of disparate data to find useful information directly impacts productivity. To remedy this problem, Vertaco decided to provide a streamlined solution for end users to catalog, manage, maintain and report on any aspect of a property or building facility. 

Building Works™, a multi-user property and facility management application built by Vertaco, is an innovative solution developed from an architect’s point of view. This application was created to give property and facility managers an in-depth, organized view of the volumes of data used in day-to-day decision-making. The application was built with Microsoft® SQL Server, Microsoft® Visual Basic, and the ComponentOne® VSFlexGrid Pro, and VSVIEW Classic and Reporting Edition components. Each area of business functionality was implemented as a separate ActiveX DLL. The application was designed to scale to an unlimited number of users and can span multiple database servers.

Once developed, Building Works needed to be put to the test to ensure that the product provided enough value to users in a real world application. This problem was solved by finding a partner who was willing to use the software in their business and provide test data. This information has been extremely valuable and allowed us to make adjustments very quickly.

“ComponentOne VSVIEW Classic and ComponentOne VSFlexGrid Pro were used in Building Works because both components were easy to use, well documented with sample code and help files, and great time savers when implementing complex feature sets,” said Jim Durham, owner of Vertaco. 

VSFlexGrid Pro is used in the Work Order/Maintenance section of Building Works, and provides a streamlined and easy way to create an expandable bill of materials for a work order using the products’ subtotal features. It is also used throughout Building Works to create drop down lists within a grid. There are many user-defined fields in the application where an administrator can create a custom drop down list of choices for the field. Using ComponentOne’s VSFlexGrid Pro made the implementation of these types of features straightforward and effortless. In the past, adding a custom drop down list to a standard grid would have typically taken several days of programming, however, with the use of VSFlexGrid Pro this task was completed in just a few hours.

VSVIEW was used throughout Building Works to create printable reports and print previews for the company’s critical data. Having easy to read, well-formatted reports are extremely important to the end users of Building Works. Using ComponentOne VSVIEW’s export to RTF tools made creating robust reports extremely fast and easy. Not only did the VSVIEW Reporting play a large role in delivering flexible and useful reports, the VSVIEW Classic component allowed for a convenient print preview feature, and delivered this feature with even more ease. In fact, VSVIEW Classic’s ease of use allowed developers to quickly and easily add unscheduled print preview capabilities to every data form in the application. This feature was not planned for the release of the latest version, but VSVIEW allowed developers to add the functionality at the end of the development cycle with absolutely no impact to their tight development schedule. 

In the end, ComponentOne’s VSFlexGrid Pro and VSVIEW Classic and Reporting Editions, provide valuable functionality to a mission critical application. The most valuable feature, exclusively provided by ComponentOne VSVIEW Reporting, is the ability to generate reports on any given property, resulting in timesaving benefits for end users. Before the ComponentOne software was integrated into the solution, putting together a comprehensive property report took several days. With the ComponentOne VSFlexGrid Pro and VSVIEW Classic and Reporting functionality, the reporting tasks take literally minutes.

About Vertaco
Vertaco creates and markets multi-user software applications and solutions for vertical market spaces. Vertaco has developed applications for the distribution, education and pharmaceutical industries, including the first TCP/IP based video control network and one of the first commercial implementations of an XML gateway for order processing. For more information, visit www.vertaco.com. 


Building Works is a trademark of Building Works Incorporated. Microsoft® SQL Server and Microsoft® Visual Basic are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. ComponentOne® VSFlexGrid Pro, VSVIEW Classic, and VSVIEW Reporting Editions are trademarks of ComponentOne LLC.