FAQ: Tracking Tagged Assets, Streams, and Usage

[arundhati.ghosh]

We often get questions related to tracking usage; especially understanding what is classified, tagged, and when in doubt, how to investigate. In this article we will revisit some foundational concepts, provide further clarifications when working with type properties and discuss workflows to investigate tagged asset counts…with examples! 

• What is a tagged asset? 

A tagged asset in Tandem is any element that has been classified and at least one associated parameter is populated. Check out this article to understand what is and isn’t a tagged asset. 

• What is a stream? 

A stream is a parameter that sends telemetry data to Tandem. 

• How are tagged assets and streams calculated? 

Only Account Admins have access to the Usage page where the consumption for billing purposes is reported. These articles provide an overview of how this calculation takes place: 

Calculating Tagged Assets 

Explained! How are Streams counted? 

• What are Element and Types in Tandem? 

In Tandem, Elements and Types are key concepts within the properties panel. An Element is an instance of a Type, and a Type defines the common properties of all instances or Elements of that Type. The article, Elements vs Types in Autodesk Tandem dives deeper into this concept. 

Since Tandem is dependent on how the Revit model is structured, it is helpful to review the fundamentals in terms of Revit as well and understand how it translates to Tandem. Revit has the concept of Categories, Families, Types, and Instances. Below are two common examples: 

	Example 1		Example 2
Revit Category	Mechanical Equipment		Doors
Revit Family	Air Handler		Door – Interior – Single
Revit Type	ERV-1	ERV-2	30” X 84”	36” X 84”

• What happens when you apply a Classification at the Type level? 

The Element inherits the classification from the Type to Element. In other words, the initially selected element and all the identical “types” of that element will now have the same classification. 

• How can you see which assets are classified with a Type parameter? 

One-way users can see what Type the element belongs to is to look at the “Type Name” column in the Inventory Panel.  A second way to see this is by clustering by the “Revit Type” in the filters panel. You can add any type parameters as a column in the Inventory panel to see if there is data in those fields. 

• What is the Data Dashboard showing? 

In our example, the building has 273 Interior-Single Doors of 5 different types. All these Doors are from the same manufacturer and purchased on the same date. To tag the manufacturer on all Doors, you would click one Door of each type, select Type in the properties panel, and then add/update the manufacturer property. Dashboards would now show 273 tagged assets (counting all elements of that type, but not the Type itself), and the Usage page should show you 5 tagged assets (counting just the Type that we needed to store data for). The number in the Data Dashboards is counted in this way so that users know how complete the data is at handover.  What is displayed on the Usage page is what is billed. 

• How is the Tagged Asset counted in Usage? 

Each Type group is counted as one tagged asset if it is classified at the Type level and has a Type parameter populated. As an example, the building has 335 total Doors. Of those 335, there are 17 different types of Doors.  Say, we have 20 of Door Type 1, and we want to update the manufacturer for all these doors. Once the manufacture is updated it is counted as 1 tagged asset on the Usage page. In the event that all those assets had an element property updated, that would increase the usage by 20 tagged assets for billing purposes. So, in this example, assuming all the 335 Doors have an Asset ID (Element property) and all the 17 types have a manufacturer (Type property), the Usage page will show 335 + 17 = 352 tagged assets. 

• What does the Clean Tagged Assets function do? 

If you have classified an element and then tagged it, and for some reason you un-classify the element, the parameters and the associated data will be deleted. The Tandem database updates once every 24 hours. To remove the un-classified assets from the database, you can use the Clean Tagged Assets button which will force tagged assets to clean up and update the number of tagged assets count. In addition, this function will check to see what assets have been newly tagged, that is, assets that have been classified and at least one parameter has been filled in.  

• What happens to the tagged assets count if I delete a model after tagging assets? 

Assets tagged in Tandem and subsequently deleted in Revit will still be considered as tagged assets when the updated version of the Revit file is imported to Tandem. This is because these elements can technically be restored or undeleted. If you find yourself in a situation where you need to clean up the tagged asset count for elements that were deleted from Revit, the solution at this time is to delete the model file from Tandem and import it again. Should you have additional questions regarding the product, you may reach out to Support.