ConstructConnect Analytics Specification Positioning Dashboard
- Before you begin
- Primary Specification Positioning workflows
- Open the Specification Positioning dashboard
- Choose search tags and filters
- Review the AI summary
- Check your project totals
- Project breakdown
- Top 5 Categories
- Specification Division
- Project value distribution by search tag
- Review Specification Trends and the Comparison Table
- Refine the view
- See specification activity by state
- See which products are specified together
- Open company and project details
- Export and share specification results
- Save and reuse dashboard views
- Getting help from inside Analytics
Use the Specification Positioning dashboard to see how often your products and competing products are specified across projects and markets. It turns search-tag-based specification activity into a focused view of architects, firms, and locations your team can act onmdash;so you can protect wins and decide where to invest more effort.
Before you begin
Make sure you:
- Have search tags set up in ConstructConnect Project Intelligence that align to your brands, product lines, and competitors.
- Know which time periods, geographies, and project categories you want to compare (for example, ldquo;roofing specifications in the Northeast over the last 12 monthsrdquo;).
Primary Specification Positioning workflows
Use the Specification Positioning dashboard to:
- Track where brands or product lines are being specified.
- Understand how your products are performing across markets.
- See where competing products are being specified.
- Review how specification activity changes by geography.
- See how specification share changes over time across search tags (products, product lines, or competitors).
- Find which types of projects, project sizes, and states your specifications are concentrated in.
- Spot which of your search tags are specified together on the same projects.
The sections below walk through these workflows step by step.
Open the Specification Positioning dashboard
- In the ConstructConnect Platform, click the Analytics icon (bar chart) in the left-hand navigation.
- In the Analytics workspace, select Specification Positioning.
- Use the sidebar menu to move between Market Overview, Company Targeting, and Specification Positioning as needed.
Choose search tags and filters
Use the filters at the top of the dashboard to focus on the products, competitors, locations, and project activity you want to review.
- Search Tag - Start by selecting up to 10 tags that represent the products, brands, or competitors you want to track. These tags determine which specification mentions appear throughout the dashboard.
- Date Type - Choose the project date you want to analyze, such as Start Date or Bid Date.
- Date Range - Select the current period and comparison period so you can see how specification activity is changing over time, like Yesterday, Last 7 Days, or Year to Date.
- Project State/Province - Focus on the territories you care about.
- Project Country - Choose whether to view projects in the United States or Canada.
- Project Category - Narrow the view to the categories most relevant to your portfolio (e.g. Multi-Residential, Educational, or Hotel/Motel).
For additional filters, click More to refine the view
- Division - Filter by the two-digit CSI division that best matches your products or market focus, like 03-Concrete or 05-Metal.
- Sector - Focus on the market sectors most relevant to you, such as Private, Public-City, or Public-Federal.
- Project Subcategory - Narrow the view within a broader project category, such as selecting Apartments or Condominiums.
- Company Name - Jump to a specific company when you already know who you want to review.
- Company Role and Company Industry- Focus on the firms that matter most to your strategy, Architects, Contractors, or, more specifically, Asphalt Paving Contractors.
- Project Type - Limit results to the types of projects you want to analyze, such as Remodeling, Paving, or Demolition.
- Project Stage - See whether specification activity is concentrated in planning, bidding, or post-bid work (e.g. Design, GC Bidding, or Post-Bid).
- Project City and Project County - Refine the view to more specific project locations.
- Company State, Company County, and Company City - Narrow the results based on where companies are located.
After you change your search tags or filters, look for the blue Refresh button. When it’s blue, the results on the screen don’t match your current selections yet. Click it every time you want the metrics, charts, and tables to update. They won’t change until you do.
As you change your search tags or adjust these filters, the metrics, charts, and tables on the page update automatically.
Review the AI summary
The AI Summary at the top of the dashboard provides a quick overview of how specification activity is behaving in your current view.
Use it to:
- See which products, competitors, or categories stand out.
- Confirm that you are focused on the right time periods and locations.
- Capture a short explanation for product reviews, territory meetings, or leadership reports.
After you change your search tags or other filters and click Refresh, the summary updates so it always reflects the current view on the screen.
Check your project totals
Two summary tiles near the top of the dashboard, just below the filters and next to the AI Summary, show the big picture of your current sections:
-
Total Project Count mdash; The number of projects that match your selected search tags and filters.
-
Total Project Value mdash; The combined value of those projects.
After you change your search tags or filters and click Refresh, both tiles update, so they#39;re a quick way to confirm your selections are returning the projects you expected before you dig into the charts below.
Project breakdown
Use the charts in this section to quickly spot patterns in specification activity.
This section includes three separate donut charts:
- Project Type - Shows how specification activity is distributed across project types in your current view.
- Project Stage - Shows how specification activity is distributed across planning, bidding, and post-bid projects.
- Project Sector - Shows how specification activity is distributed across market sectors.
These charts showcase the categories with the highest specification volume in your current view.
In them, you can:
- Hover over a chart element to see exact counts of project types.
- Click on any wedge to open the projects that make up that portion of the chart.
Top 5 Categories
You can also use this horizontal bar chart to see which project categories account for the most specification activity in your current view. It ranks the five categories with the highest specification counts across your selected search tags.
Each search tag has its own color, so you can quickly see how much of each project type comes from each tag.
Just like the Project Breakdown section, you can hover over or drill-down into chart elements to see exact values or individual project lists.
Specification Division
The Specification Division chart shows which specific trades your specification activity falls into. It groups projects by two-digit CSI division (for example, 03-Concrete or 05-Metal), so you can see the exact breakdown of how your products are specified across them. It#39;s a helpful companion to Top 5 Categories, which shows the kinds of projects, such as Educational or Hotel/Motel, driving the most activity.
To dig deeper, click any section of a bar to open the list of projects behind it
Project value distribution by search tag
The Project Value Distribution chart shows whether your products are being specified more often on larger or smaller projects. It groups projects into value ranges, from under $500K up to $100M+, and divides each bar by search tag, using the same tag colors you see elsewhere on the dashboard, so you can see the exact breakdown of how each tag is specified across project sizes.
Compare the colors within each bar to see which products or brands are strongest for each project size. For example, if you#39;ve tagged one of your products alongside a competitor#39;s, you may find that the competitor leads on larger projects while yours leads on smaller jobs. The same approach works for comparing your own product lines against each other.
Hover over a section of a bar to see exact counts.
Review Specification Trends and the Comparison Table
Start with Specification Trends chart. It shows how specification counts and share change over time for each selected search tag in the current period versus the comparison period.
Then use the Specification Comparison Table to compare tags side by side and see how your products compare with competing products.
Sort the table
- Click a column header to sort in ascending or descending order.
(Screenshot placeholder) - Start by sorting Spec Share or Total Projects to see where your specification activity is highest and where it is lower than expected.
Note: Because some projects match multiple search tags, specification counts and percentages may add up to more than 100%. The Total row counts unique projects only. Treat the percentages as a reference for comparing tags, rather than an exact measure of total specification share
Use the table to:
- Track mentions by seeing which companies or architects most often specify a brand or product tag.
- Compare products by reviewing Specification Share across tags.
- Monitor competition by focusing on competitor tags and the companies that specify them most often.
Refine the view
If the results do not look right, update your search tags or adjust the date, location, category, or stage filters.
Click any row in the table to open the project list behind those counts.
Drill into details
- Click on any bar in the Total Projects column to see the list of projects that contribute to those specification counts.
- Project lists now include a Square Footage column, so you can see the size of each project at a glance. If a project’s square footage isn’t available, the cell is left blank. This is common for civil projects.
Compare year over year
The Specification Period-over-Period table shows how specification activity for each of your search tags has changed over the last three complete years. For each tag, you#39;ll see the number of specifications in each year and the percentage change from the year before. Use it to spot which products are on the rise and which are slowing down.
This table isn’t affected by the Date Range filter. It always shows the last three complete years (2023 to 2025 through the end of 2026).
To save the results, use the three-dot menu to download the table as a CSV file
See specification activity by state
The Specification Map shows which search tag is specified most often in each state. Each state is colored to match its leading tag, so you can see at a glance where each of your products, brands, or competitors comes out on top. Hover over any state to see all of your selected search tags and the number of projects for each.
For a side-by-side look at every state, use the Specification Share by State table. It works like the Specification Comparison table butorganized by state instead of by company. States are ranked by total number of specifications, and each one shows the number of projects and the specification share percentage for each of your search tags. To save the results, use the three-dot menu to download the table as a CSV file
See which products are specififed together
Most of the dashboard looks at each search tag on its own. The Search Tag Overlap Matrix shows how your tags connect, revealing how often two are specified on the same project.
How to read it:
-
Your selected search tags are listed across the top and down the left side, forming a grid.
-
Each square shows the percentage of projects that mention both tags in that pair. For example, if the square where two tags meet shows 28%, that means 28% of projects mention both of those tags.
-
Darker squares mean more overlap. Lighter squares mean less.
-
A gray square with a dash means the row and the column are the same tag, so therersquo;s nothing to compare.
-
Hover over a square to see a short summary of that pair. Click it to open the list of projects behind the percentage.
Click any square to review the shared projects and decide which ones deserve a closer look
Open Company and Project details
When you want more context about a specific architect, manufacturer, or firm:
- Click the company name in the Comparison Table.
- On the Company Details page in Project Intelligence, review project counts by stage, category mix, and basic location/contact details.
- Open associated projects or documents if you need more information before deciding what to do next.
To learn more about the Company Details page, check out this brief article: Understanding the Company Details Page in Project Intelligence.
Export and share specification results
After reviewing your filters, tables, and charts:
- Use the three-dot menu on any dashboard to:
- Download the comparison table as a CSV or Excel file.
- Download the Specification Share by State and Specific Period-Over-Period tables as CSV files.
- Download project lists from any chart or table. The downloads now include a square-footage column. The cell is blank if the information is not available.
- Use these exports:
-
In product and territory review meetings
-
Build lists for campaigns and follow-up outreach.
-
Share performance summaries with leadership or other teams.
-
Exports use your current search tags and filters, so the data you download matches exactly what you see on the dashboard. The one exception is the Specification Period-over-Period table, which always shows the last three complete years regardless of your Date Range.
Exports use your current search tags and filters, so the data you download matches exactly what you see on the dashboard.
Save and reuse dashboard views
Use Saved Dashboards to save a combination of search tags and dashboard filters on the Market Overview, Company Targeting, or Specification Positioning dashboard. Search tags define what to look for, while dashboard filters narrow where and when to look. Select both before saving so you can return to the same filtered view without rebuilding it. You can reuse the same search tags in different saved viewsmdash;for example, to review your products or compare them with competitors.
Save or open a dashboard
- Select the search tags that define what you want to find.
- Set additional dashboard filters to narrow the view.
- Click the Save Dashboard button. In the form that opens, name the dashboard and save it.
- In the left panel, under SAVED, select a saved dashboard to reload its tags and filters.
Saved dashboards appear in the SAVED section of the left panel and are sorted by most recently used. The active saved dashboard is highlighted.
Your default dashboard has a Default badge, is pinned at the top, and opens automatically when you open Analytics. If you save more than 10 dashboards, use View All Dashboards to see the complete list.
Update a saved dashboard
- Use the search-tag and filter controls at the top of the dashboard. When the current filter state differs from the saved version, an Edited indicator appears in the page header.
- Click Save Dashboard to open the dashboard options.
- Select one of the following:
- Save Changes to update the existing dashboard.
- Save as New to create a separate dashboard.
- Cancel to exit without saving.
The original remains unchanged until you choose Save Changes. To rename a saved dashboard, edit the Dashboard Name field and select Save Changes.
Getting help from inside Analytics
The Specification Positioning dashboard includes built-in help so you can learn features as you use them:
- Use the speech bubble icon in the bottom right corner of the screen to send a question to our support team (select Project Intelligence in the Product Name drop-down for questions involving Analytics).
- Look for guiding questions in chart subtitles (for example, ldquo;Which construction categories drive the most activity and value?rdquo;) to understand what each chart is showing.
- Hover over information (i) icons on metrics and charts to see definitions and calculation methods.
If you need additional help, search for ldquo;Analyticsrdquo; or ldquo;Specification Positioningrdquo; in the ConstructConnect Help Center.
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