DarkerKat
design & such
Thanks for the reply. I'm glad to hear you are working on improving your system, but please do not misrepresent this thread. When I posted this in 2022 I had just talked to a SignAgent rep who confirmed that they had yet to change the main things I took issue with during our free trial.
Since you felt the need to try and sell on a post looking for alternatives to your program, here is my full breakdown from the trial we did in 2019 for any other sign professionals looking into using it. SignAgent may well have resolved many of these in the last few years, unfortunately we already used our trial and don't have a way to verify.
(context, comments in black are my initial impressions, comments in blue are from the end of our trial)
Web App Abilities:
- Process Plan Reviews – this is intuitive and easy to work with, lovely from a user point of view and once you know what you are looking at, I think it is really clear for outside viewers + This is the main value in the site from my perspective.
- Can do simple sign layouts – they boast being able to do very complex jobs, I’m holding off judgement on that for now because I just haven’t gotten to play with it yet + Yeah, you can but those signs serve no purpose past the plan review… At the end of the day we would still need to lay out every individual sign for production. This really appears more useful than it is.
- Pricing and Workflow Integration – I think *coworkers name* or someone that does pricing regularly should take a look at this since it is not my area of expertise, but if we are running plan reviews through the program you can directly add and edit pricing in app which seems really appealing
- Review/Reject Proofs In App – This is probably one of my favorite features, when you set someone up for reviewing a section of a job they can approve/review/reject and comment on proofs all in app (again this relies on getting the customers on board with using the app, I will address this again later)
- SVG Templates/Batch Editing Features – You can clone both sign types and whole floors of signage plus make edits across the board to all of one sign type. The SVG template method also allows for graphical changes that would hit all of the signs at once.
- Translations – This allows you to text swap across the board on signage, if for instance a room name changed you could change all of the rooms with that name to something else. (also change sign languages if so inclined) + didn’t get to work with this
- World Map Integration – Along with uploading floor plans they have [knockoff] google maps intergraded so you can place exterior signs using lat/long & addresses + This is dumb and borderline useless
- Export Features – you can export part of all of the documents for a project and the pdfs can be dragged into any adobe for further edits/modifications + this is kind of a limited feature that could be improved upon but it is nice
- Shop/Tech Drawings – This one is iffy and I will update with more thoughts later, they do allow you to upload technical drawings but it doesn’t seem to be integrated as much as I would like + Site Does Support Multi Page PDFs though
- Messaging Schedule – This is another of my favorite features. I love this and think it could be produced very effectively.
- Adobe – this plays shockingly well with adobe software, templates are meant to be set up in AI and the app can interoperate AI layers well + this is hard to explain in type and falls into another downfall of the program, but worth taking a look at
- Excel – You can export really nice organized excel plans and also import them into a site to cut out some initial work, makes integration seem like it woudl be easy- NOT SORTED PER FLOOR/PER LOCATION – no way to sort them this way?
- Tech Support – they have very fast email response and seemly really helpful tech support
- Calculations – I didn’t get a chance to use this as much as I would like to but this is a really useful feature to affect a large group of signs at once with basic factors. The calculations are limited at the moment is about 50 signs.
- Plans – aside from one major issue (see below) this is likely the most useful part of this program in my option without the need for bulky plans installers/site reviewers/PMs in meetings could easily pull up plans/specs/all details on a job and the status of each sign
- Site Photos – app allows for notes and photos to be tacked onto a sign type in the app, so someone could walk a install site and mark any issues with photo and notes
- Individual Previews – not sure which sign goes on that door? Pull up location in app and the exact preview will be shown with the correct content + In my opinion this is a less valuable feature in the long run it just doubles up the work.
- You can’t make edits to signs – I’m putting this in the pros column because it means that installers couldn’t accidentally mess up or delete any of the info on a job, they can add photo and notes but cannot move or edit signs themselves.
- Only One User On Main Account – It will sign out anyone with the app open if another user signs in
- It’s all about the APP – they really, really want people to use the app, I get the impression that adding export features was something they didn’t want to do. + this was confirmed in talking to their tech support, things are designed to work on the app and only export under duress
- No Keys – there is not a way in-app to add keys to plan drawings (checked with tech support on this) because, again they want you to do everything online. + no way to add general notes to plans (Questions for clients & comments for other staff – we need to add this)
- It is web based – so it’s prone to running slow and having issues like anything else on the web. + Oh my god, it is so dang glitchy. Shockingly glitchy for professional software.
- Mobile App for IOS Only – they do not plan on supporting android/anything else for at least a few years. We could get a workaround for this by having something like a “site review” tablet for the office but I had to point it out. + mobile integration is really valuable and I think having a site review tablet would actually be an Incredibly good investment as it would force all of our site people to give consistent notes, measures, photos.
- Learning Curve – just had to point it out, this will drastically change workflow, maybe for the better, but there would be a learning curve. + this will still be an issue even if we create our own program, I didn’t have as much of an issue with this but *coworker name* really struggled with some aspects of this. If moved out of design this would still need to be a job for someone who is good with analytics and familiar with plan reviews.
- $$$$ - It’s not that expensive and because of the way permissions work it seems like we would be able to get away with just two paid office users and 1 mobile app, permissions to edit and view can be controlled by those accounts and we would have all of the benefits of a professionally designed program + You’re paying for the tech support -which is worth the price, unfortunately I don’t think the software is worth the cost in it’s current form.
- Complex/Confusing Naming Conventions - I could have done better with this if I had known more going into it but it is also very hard to edit things after the fact. There is no key, so naming has to be simpler or easier to understand
