The Bulk Operations Crisis: Why AEC Teams Waste Hours on Clicks
490 feature requests. 3,860 votes. One consistent theme: ACC users desperately need bulk operations. Here's the data and the solution.
This is Part 2 of our ACC Pain Points series. We analyzed 4,295 feature requests from the ACC🏗️ACCAutodesk's construction management platform.View in glossary Ideas forum.
The Numbers At a Glance
Across every category — users, photos, documents, issues, submittals — the same request appears: “Let us do this in bulk.”
The #1 Most-Voted Request
“There is a major need to be able to add a new hire to many projects in ACC. Instead of wasting my time opening each project📁ProjectContainer for folders and files within a hub.View in glossary and manually adding a new user to 20 projects, we need a tool that will automate this process!”
The Math of Manual Work
Adding 1 User to 50 Projects (Manual)
For a large enterprise with 200+ projects? Over 2 hours of clicking. Now multiply by every new hire, every departing employee, every role change.
Where Bulk Operations Are Missing
Bulk Operation Requests by Category
Number of ideas requesting batch/bulk functionality
Why This Matters for AEC
Typical Large Construction Project
When every operation is click-by-click, BIM🏛️BIMIntelligent 3D model-based design for buildings.View in glossary managers become full-time data entry clerks.
The Workarounds Comparison
Manual Labor
- • Assign intern to click through
- • Expensive labor cost
- • Error-prone
- • Soul-crushing work
Desktop Tools (Naviate)
- • Enterprise pricing (not published)
- • Windows-only (300MB+)
- • Can’t automate in CI/CD🔁CI/CDAutomated build, test, and deployment pipelines.View in glossary
- • Limited feature coverage
Custom Scripts
- • Requires developer resources
- • No standard patterns
- • Every team reinvents wheel
- • Maintenance burden
RAPS CLI
- • Free & open source
- • Cross-platform (single binary)
- • CI/CD ready
- • 50 parallel operations
Performance Comparison
Time to Add User to 200 Projects
Comparison of different approaches
The RAPS Solution
Add User to All Projects
# Add new hire to all 200 projects
raps admin user add "$ACCOUNT_ID" "newhire@company.com" --role project_adminFilter by Project Pattern
# Only add to 2024 projects
raps admin user add "$ACCOUNT_ID" "contractor@partner.com" \
--role viewer --filter "^2024-"Dry-Run Preview
# See what would happen without executing
raps admin user add "$ACCOUNT_ID" "user@company.com" --dry-run| Project | Action |
|---|---|
| Downtown Tower | Would add |
| Hospital Wing | Would add |
| University Library | Would skip (exists) |
CI/CD Integration
name: User Onboarding
on:
workflow_dispatch:
inputs:
email:
required: true
description: 'New user email'
jobs:
onboard:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Add to all projects
run: |
raps admin user add "$ACCOUNT_ID" "${{ github.event.inputs.email }}" \
--role project_adminWhat’s Available Now
✓ Available in RAPS 4.0
raps admin user addraps admin user removeraps admin user update-roleraps admin folder rightsraps admin project listraps admin operation resume
🚧 Coming Soon
raps admin issue bulk-createraps admin photo bulk-tagraps admin submittal bulk-updateraps admin document bulk-upload
The Broader Pattern
UI-first design doesn’t scale. ACC was designed for small-to-medium projects. Enterprise contexts require API automation🤖AutomationReplacing manual processes with software.View in glossary.
Next in Series
- Part 1: The 96.6% Problem — Overview of ACC forum analysis
- Part 3: The Permission Problem — When basic access controls are missing
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