The benefit of material tracking is you know where your materials are at any stage of the supply chain, from manufacture to install on site. Every material you're tracking has a record in Matrak that shows where it is and what its status is.

These Record Types have different categories: Materials, Locations, Containers and Tasks. Materials include everything from big items like Facade panels to small items like nuts and bolts. Locations tell you where these materials are in the supply chain. Containers are your stillages, shipping containers, or deliveries. Tasks show which jobs need to be done, or what needs to be checked.

Record Types are essentially like templates for your Matrak records. They all have unique IDs and status descriptions by default, and then you can add different descriptions to collect information about your materials like comments, dates, times, links, and photos. When you edit these descriptions it will change the fields in all of the associated records that use this template.

You can create Record Types for Materials, Locations, Containers and Tasks. For example, when you create a Record Type for a Stillage in the Container category you might want to include fields like Location, Arrival Date, Arrival Time and Comments. That way you know where your delivery is going and if it's been packed properly.

On the left hand side of your workspace, you will see a vertical navigation bar, with our Record Type categories 'Materials', 'Tasks', 'Containers' and 'Locations'. There is also a handy search bar, so you can find your Record Types easily.

To add a new Record Type into one of these categories, simply click the '+' add button next to your chosen category, this will automatically create a new Record Type within this group.

Now type in your Record Type name and click enter, for this example let's setup a Stillage Record Type.

You'll now see a new Record Type called 'Stillage' in your workspace, this has been pre-populated with a text descriptions for the 'ID' and a list of possible values for 'Status', you can't remove these descriptions, they're necessary to make sure all your materials are tracked correctly!

But you can add more descriptions, above we wanted to add some descriptions to make sure we knew the progress and arrival date of our new Stillage, let's add some descriptions for Location, Arrival Date, Arrival Time and comments.

Simply right click on either of the current descriptions and it will bring up a menu where you can:

If you hover over 'Insert one below' or 'Insert one above' it will bring up a list of description options:

To create a new description for location we're going to select a list and name it 'Location', so we can add multiple selection options such as 'In Transit' and 'Arrived on Site'.

We can now continue to add descriptions to our Record Type such as a Time description for the 'Arrival Time' a Date description for the 'Arrival Date' and a Text Area to collect comments.

Note: Text is a single line of text for shorter descriptions and Text Area is expandable suitable for many comments and longer descriptions.

Now your Record Type is set up correctly, you can start creating Records by using the Add Records Page, you can add information for all of the new fields you've created by typing it in or pasting directly from Excel.

If you want to re-order the descriptions in your Record Type you can simply hover over a description you would like to move, and left click and hold, and move it up or down to it's required position

You can also do this within the list dropdowns:

And in the side navigation. Note: You can drag and drop Record Types within these categories, if you want to move a Record Type into another category, right click on the Record Type and use the menu to click 'Change Category' and select and new option.

You may have noticed throughout this article the Edit History Side bar has been updating with our actions as we've been creating this new Record Type.

If you can't currently see the Edit History sidebar, simply click on the wrench icon which will bring up some Admin settings, the clock icon will bring up your Edit history sidebar.

This will show you a history of all the changes made to this page. You can see if someone creates new Record Types, changes or creates new descriptions, or deletes any information. This way, you know all the edits that were made to your record types.

Sharing Configuration:

Previously in this article we quickly touched upon the 'Edit List Reference' feature, this is a super handy feature if you want to quickly change to a common list you use frequently.

On any project you're going to have multiple types of list such as statuses, locations, quality checks and ITP's, if you right click in your Record Type, it brings up your menu.

Click 'Edit List Reference'

This will bring up a screen with all the lists you've created for this project, you can scroll and select any list from this page, and it will update the list value in your Record Type.

If that wasn't enough we have another handy feature on the Edit Record Types page, if you right click on any of your Record Types on the Right hand navigation, it brings up the menu where you can click to 'Add to workspace'.

This allows you to view and edit multiple Record Types at the same time, without having to click between multiple tabs or pages.

You can also use this menu to change the category of your Record Types, Rename or Delete them. Note: Deleting a Record Type cannot be undone.

Thanks for spending the time getting to know the new Edit Record Types page, we hope it's been informative and as always reach out in our help chat for any further questions.