SmarterWX Locate delivers a GIS-centric approach to risk management and safe working near underground assets by collating Before You Dig responses and presenting information through a map-based interface.

This approach helps reduce the time spent managing Before You DIg enquiries and avoids the risk of missing any content. Its presentation of underground asset information on an interactive web map improves understanding of the risks faced by excavators.

Supporting the Before You Dig mission of “zero damage, zero harm” SmarterWX Locate ensures that the right information is made available to the right people at the right time and place.

Lodging Before You Dig Enquiries

SmarterWX Locate supports two operating models for lodging enquiries: –

  • Lodge through 1100.com.au
  • Create directly within SmarterWX Locate

With both of these models, SmarterWX Locate collates the responses from your enquiry in the same way in the same web user interface.

Creating enquiries within SmarterWX Locate requires a separate commercial agreement between your organisation and Before You Dig to access the Mass Enquiry API. Contact your SmarterWX account manager for information about activating this API.

Help Topics

The first thing you will see as a SmarterWX Locate user is an invitation email. This email will include a link that you can click on to complete your user registration and start using SmarterWX Locate.

  1. Signing up and password management
  2. Getting started guide
  3. Searching for enquiries
  4. Viewing enquiry details
  5. Working with teams
  6. Creating new enquiries
  7. User management

Advanced Topics

  1. Manually matching unrecognised emails
  2. Configuring single sign-on
  3. Viewing enquiries in an external GIS application
  4. Running management reports

Frequently Asked Questions

SmarterWX Locate

In SmarterWX Locate, an enquiry can have one of four different statuses:

  1. Created – is the status when an enquiry is first submitted and you are waiting for the confirmation email of the enquiry to be sent, triggering the notifications to the relevant asset owners
  2. Waiting – the enquiry has been submitted and sent to all the relevant asset owners, and is currently awaiting responses. Some may have already been received, but not all. An enquiry will only have a status of ‘Waiting’ for a maximum of 48 hours
  3. Fulfilled – the enquiry has received all of the responses required from asset owners, and is ‘fulfilled’ or ‘completed’.
  4. Expired – the enquiry has been fulfilled and has passed its expiry date

In SmarterWX Locate, the response from an asset owner is managed under ‘View Enquiry’. A response can have one of three statuses:

  1. Received – the response and the required documents and maps have been received from the asset owner
  2. Pending – the response from the asset owner is yet to be received
  3. Timed Out – the response from the asset owner has not been received within the 48 hour SLA as required by Before You Dig

Note, if a response has the status of ‘Timed Out’, it will still change to ‘Received’ if we receive a response.

One of the biggest difficulties users face with the current Before You Dig process is the manual receipt and collation of responses from asset owners.

In SmarterWX Locate, the primary feature is the ability to streamline and easily manage responses for Before You Dig enquiries. You can create an enquiry directly through Locate and manage the complete process within the portal, if the required commercial agreements are in place.

The more common flow would be that you submit an enquiry in 1100.com.au, and manage the enquiry in Locate. To do this, follow a simple guide in Locate to update the email address of your 1100.com.au account to a pre-defined email address (provided), which redirects all responses from asset owners to Locate to be collated and managed on your behalf.

Once this is done, you can continue to submit enquiries through 1100.com.au or your GIS applications and manage within Locate, rather than manually.

In order to create an enquiry within Locate, you need to have a commercial agreement in place to access the API’s linked with the Before You Dig system. This requires a commercial agreement with the vendor and comes with a fee. If you or your organisation does not have this in place, then you will continue to submit Before You Dig enquiries as normal.

When you update your email address in Locate (see the Guide if you need to complete this), we will receive the responses for any enquiry submitted in 1100.com.au from your account, as the email address is update to one that we can intercept. When responses are received to that email address, we receive and manage in Locate and can then easily allocate to an enquiry on your behalf.

The main benefit of SmarterWX Locate is collating and managing of responses for an enquiry on your behalf. We manage these within our own mailbox so it can be allocated and viewed easily within Locate. If, for some reason we are unable to allocate a response to an enquiry, the Mailbox will allow you to manually assign the response to an enquiry. It also allows you to be able to refer back to referrals easily at any time.

The ‘Linked with 1100’ confirms you have successfully linked your Locate account with 1100.com.au, and can manage all your enquiries within Locate. If you have not completed this step, you will be unable to maximise the benefits of Locate. To link your account, click on the ‘?’ next to this preference under ‘Settings’.

All products within SmarterWX are managed through your Identity profile. This ensures you details are consistent across all the products you have access to within SmarterWX. To view or update your details, visit https://identity.smarterwx.com.

Within Locate, we have anchored all the guides on the screens they appear on, so you can refer to them at any time. Simply click the ‘?’ on the screens to access them again.

The Typical Response Time for Asset Owners is calculated through analysing the average response time of an asset owner from receiving an enquiry confirmation and sending a response over the last 14 days. The calculation  also considers and removes any outliers when assessing the average response time.

This feature is currently not available; however we have identified as a future enhancement if our users ask for it. The benefit is easily sharing responses with other members of your project or organisation.

Occasionally when an asset owner sends a response back in reference to an enquiry, they may not reply with the sufficient information for us to recognise and allocate to an enquiry. For example, if they manually respond to enquiries, they may edit the subject and not include the enquiry reference or job identification, making it difficult to allocate to an enquiry.

 

In these instances, we will move the response to ‘Action Required’, and you will need to manually assign the response to an enquiry, or remove the response if it is not needed. You will be notified of this in three locations:

  • On your home page, under ‘Inbox’
  • As a notification badge next to ‘Mailbox’ in the menu banner
  • When you view the ‘Mailbox’ under ‘Action Required.

In SmarterWX Locate, there are 3 different roles: User, Manager, Administrator. A user who is a Manager can create projects, which can be used to manage a series of enquiries relating to work being undertaken. Users can be invited to a project, so they can easily create enquiries for a project.

Users not invited to a project can request access to a project – this could be to understand what the project is, create enquiries for the project, or to connect with other users in the project. The Manager of the project decides to approve or reject access to the project.

In SmarterWX Locate, we deliver value to you by collating and managing the responses to your submitted enquiry on your behalf, so you don’t have to worry about the hassle of looking out for and filing individual responses yourself. In order to do this, we need to ‘intercept’ the responses to your enquiry to collate and present them to you in Locate to view and manage. We do this by changing the email address that responses are sent to so we can receive them.

Note – if you have a commercial agreement in place with the current vendor, this is not needed as you create and manage enquiries directly in Locate.

The output of either option is the same, in that your enquiry will be automatically managed by Locate and you will be notified once all responses have been received.

If you submit your enquiries through 1100, there are some features within Locate which cannot be used, such as using default values for creating enquiries as part of a project, or pre-defining the geographical extent when creating enquiries.

To delete an enquiry you go to the Archive button. This will remove it from view. You can always bring it back by choosing the “Show Archived” option on the search page.

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