User Personas: Admin | Project Manager | Field User
Keywords are short tags your team adds to Daily Reports and Field Notes to flag what happened in the field and why someone in the office should look at it. A delay, a shipment problem, a missing drawing detail: the keyword is the signal that turns a routine daily report into something a project manager can find, filter, and act on the same day.
Keywords come from a list your company controls. Every organization starts with a preloaded set, and an administrator adds, renames, or removes keywords under Company Settings so the list matches how your company actually works. A field user picks from that list and cannot create a new keyword while filling out a document.
This article covers what keywords are for and how to decide which ones your company needs. For the steps to apply one, see Applying Keywords and Other Tags to Documents. For the admin setup, see Keyword Setup.
Use the links below to jump to a topic:
- Where Keywords Appear
- Who Does What
- Why Keywords Are Worth Setting Up
- Choosing the Keywords Your Company Needs
- Reviewing and Responding to Keywords
- Best Practices
- Permissions
- FAQ
- Are keywords the same as Location Tags?
- Which documents can carry keywords?
- How many keywords can a single document carry?
- Can a field user create a new keyword while filling out a report?
Where Keywords Appear
| Where | What you see |
| Daily Reports | A Keywords field on the report, on the web and in the mobile app. See Daily Reports. |
| Field Notes | A Keywords field on the note, on the web and in the mobile app. See Field Notes. |
| Document logs | A Keywords column you can filter, so you can pull up only the documents carrying the keyword you care about. |
| Company Settings | The keyword list itself, where an administrator maintains it. |
Keywords are a different thing from Location Tags and Drawings Tags, which are created project by project and can be added on the fly. Applying Keywords and Other Tags to Documents covers both.
Who Does What
| Role | Responsibility |
| Administrator | Builds and maintains the keyword list under Company Settings, so the list stays short enough to be used and specific enough to be useful. |
| Field user | Tags Daily Reports and Field Notes with the keywords that fit what happened that day. |
| Project manager | Reviews keyword usage in the document logs, then follows up. |
Why Keywords Are Worth Setting Up
A keyword is a notifier. It says that something in this document needs attention, a response, or an action, without anyone having to read every daily report to find it. That is what shortens the gap between something going wrong in the field and someone in the office doing something about it.
Keywords also accumulate. Over a month, the pattern of which keywords your team is using becomes project-level reporting: which projects are generating delays, how often shipments arrive short, whether the same drawing detail keeps coming up.
Choosing the Keywords Your Company Needs
The keywords worth creating are the ones tied to a follow-up someone actually performs. Before you build the list, answer four questions:
- What matters most in your company's day-to-day operations?
- Which pain points in field-to-office communication are you trying to ease?
- What falls through the cracks that you want to be able to track?
- What happens on a job site that a project manager needs to know about immediately?
| Start small. A list of eight to twelve keywords that everyone applies consistently is worth far more than forty that nobody uses the same way twice. Add keywords as real needs show up rather than trying to anticipate every case. |
Example Scenarios
These are common patterns to work from. Keyword names are yours to choose, so treat the middle column as examples rather than a required list.
| Scenario | Keyword examples and how they are used | Typical follow-up |
| Job progress is being held up. | Delay, Issue. A field user creates a Daily Report and describes the delay in the comments. | The project manager contacts the responsible party and works to clear it. |
| A drawing detail is unclear or missing. | RFI. A field user creates a Field Note with a photo of the detail and a specific question in the notes. | The project manager creates an RFI and links the Field Note to it for context. |
| A material shipment arrived incomplete. | Shipment, Issue, PO. A field user creates a Field Note with photos of the invoice and of what actually showed up. | The project manager contacts the supplier to resolve the shortage. |
| Work is needed beyond the contract. | Change Order, T and M. A foreman creates a Daily Report documenting the extra labor hours and materials for that day. | The project manager creates a Change Order or a T and M ticket to capture the work. |
| Installed work or job site progress needs documenting. | Progress. A field user creates a Field Note recording the state of the work. | The project manager or general contractor reviews the note and stays current on progress. |
| Safety compliance needs a record. | Safety. A foreman creates a Daily Report with photos of crews in required PPE and notes from that day's safety meeting. | The project manager or administrator reviews the report and completes the safety record. |
Reviewing and Responding to Keywords
Keywords only pay off if somebody looks at them.
Filtering a Document Log by Keyword
On a document log page, filter the Keywords column so the list shows only documents carrying the keywords you care about. Then open a document from the filtered list to see the detail behind it.
Best Practices
- Tie every keyword to an action. If nobody does anything differently when a keyword appears, it is noise.
- Keep the list short. Long lists get scrolled past and applied inconsistently.
- Say what each keyword means. Agree on when to use Issue versus Delay before you roll them out, or you will get both on the same report.
- Give the field the same list on mobile. The keyword list is company managed, so it is identical on the web and in the app.
- Prune. Retire keywords nobody applies rather than leaving them on the list.
Permissions
| Action | What it requires |
| Create, rename, or remove keywords on the company list | Administrator access to Company Settings. See Keyword Setup. |
| Apply a keyword to a Daily Report or Field Note | The General Permissions create and edit permissions for that document type. |
| View and filter a document log | View access to the project and to the document type you are filtering. |
FAQ
Can a field user create a new keyword while filling out a report?
No. Keywords come from a company managed list, so a user selects from what exists. If the list is missing something, ask an administrator to add it under Company Settings. Location Tags on Field Notes and Drawings Tags on sheets do work that way, and Applying Keywords and Other Tags to Documents explains the difference.
How many keywords can a single document carry?
More than one. Apply every keyword that fits, since that is what makes the log filter useful later.
Which documents can carry keywords?
Daily Reports and Field Notes, on the web and in the mobile app.
Are keywords the same as Location Tags?
No. Keywords are one company wide list an administrator maintains. Location Tags are built project by project, and a user can create one at the moment they need it.
See also: Applying Keywords and Other Tags to Documents, Keyword Setup, and Applying Keywords and Other Tags to Documents on Mobile.