Onware

There are many more features within this program that my colleagues, consultants (Engineers of many disciplines) do not like that there is no room to express it's pitfall. This program was created by those I believe working at the University of Alberta, who in my opinion do not have the full depth of the contract administration process. The program they have created is a small window of what they understand in the construction and architectural industry.

Pros

That it is a cloud-based program that you can log in to online.

Cons

The linked documents is an annoying features in that if you pdf a document such as a quote or change order, it shows up on the document as "attachments" which are not attached to the pdf document. The link is very sensitive, if you hover near the link a new window opens up.
RFI: If you are a contract administrator, sometimes you are not always notified via email when a consultant has responded. But before that, the notification does not indicate if the RFI has been sent to the consultant for review or not. The worst is if you pdf the entire RFI with the responses for your files, it can be an unneccsarily 2+ pages long because of poor formatting features from the developer. This features applies to shop drawings as well.
Change Notices: has field boxes to write out in to generate forms. However this is not always a good idea as contract administrators have our forms with the legal description and fine print. So in turn we have to attach our own forms on top of copy and pasting the verbiage in the field boxes. This creates double the work and when all pdf'd together, creates more paperwork for the contractor and client.
Email notifications: serve little information as to what the notification is in regards to.
Submittals: The use of the word "Conforms as Noted" is not a widely used term in the construction industry. Typically it is Reviewed as Noted, Reviewed, Revise and Resubmit, Rejected, Not Reviewed, Information only, Records only - most of these terms are not used.

Pros

Customer support is excellent. I've always gotten a response back. Overall experience is satisfactory

Cons

1. Sometimes when writing reports, the formatting can be glitchy. For example, let say I wrote a report (report #1) where I pasted photos/pictures into the body of the text rather than attaching it as an image. Reason for this is that if the image is attached, the thumbnail that shows up on the report is too small and contractors can't see it. They usually take hard copies to site, not an electronic copy that enables them to download the photos. Then let say I start up report #2 and I import items form report #1 into it. I won't be able to delete any items on report 2 that had pictures associated with it in report 1.

2. Please allow for strike throughs of text to show up in report. Currently if I do a strike through of text in report, the strike through will not show up after it is PDF'd