RFIs
Raise, route, and close requests for information, with replies, an official response of record, and revision cycles that keep the number
The RFI register is the project's request-for-information log. Each RFI carries a question, the people it was issued to, a thread of replies, and one or more replies marked as the official response.
Open it from the project navigation. Everything on this page is scoped to the current project.
Raise an RFI
- Click New RFI.
- Enter a subject. It is the only required field, and it is capped at 500 characters.
- Enter the question. Optional at create time, capped at 10,000 characters.
- Set the manager, assignees, and distribution list. Each assignee carries its own Response required switch, defaulted from the project setting rather than set once for the whole RFI.
- Set Received from, the due date, the priority, and any reference fields you want on the record.
- Finish with either Save draft or Create and issue.
Create and issue needs ADMIN on the RFIs tool or the Act as RFI Manager grant. Without it, the RFI is still created, as a draft, and the response tells the client it was downgraded so the manager can issue it. You are not blocked, and nothing is lost.
The due date defaults to the project's "Days to Answer RFI Questions" setting (7 days out of the box) and then rolls forward off a weekend.
Received from is two different fields
The party a question came from can be either of two things, and they behave differently:
- A Struxen user. Stored as a user id, and it grants that person visibility of a private RFI, because they are a real participant with an account.
- A project directory contact. The architect, the owner's rep, a consultant. An outside party with no account. It grants no visibility, which is correct: there is nothing for them to sign in to.
Either way, the display name is captured on the record so the register and the PDF render the party without a lookup.
Numbering
RFI numbers are hard. The sequence starts at 1, the project-level prefix is locked in by the first RFI, duplicates are not permitted, and a deleted RFI's number is never reused. Gaps are correct behaviour and are never backfilled.
Numbers are allocated from a durable counter rather than derived from the highest number in use, so two people creating an RFI at the same instant cannot be handed the same number.
The lifecycle
Four states:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | Created, not yet issued. Nobody has been asked anything. |
| Open | Issued and awaiting an answer, or answered and awaiting a close. |
| Closed | Was issued, now closed. |
| Closed-Draft | Closed without ever being issued. |
Closing a draft records Closed-Draft, not Closed, and reopening a Closed-Draft returns it to Draft. That distinction exists so the log can never claim an RFI went out when it did not.
Who can move what
| Action | Who |
|---|---|
| Issue a draft | The RFI manager, or anyone with Act as RFI Manager |
| Change assignees | The RFI manager, or Act as RFI Manager |
| Post a reply | An assignee, a distribution member, the manager, or Act as RFI Manager |
| Mark or unmark an official response | Act as RFI Manager, or a participant holding the mark-official grant |
| Edit the RFI | The creator or the manager, or Act as RFI Manager |
| Close, reopen, reopen as a revision | The RFI manager, or Act as RFI Manager |
| Move to or out of the recycle bin | ADMIN on the RFIs tool |
| Delete a reply | ADMIN on the RFIs tool |
Response authority is deliberately wider than ball-in-court. A distribution member who was copied rather than assigned can still answer, because on a real job the person with the answer is often not the person the RFI was addressed to.
Ball-in-court
- Draft: the manager, who has to issue it.
- Open with no live reply in the current cycle: the assignees whose response is required.
- Open with a reply: the manager, who has to dispose of it.
- Closed, Closed-Draft, or in the recycle bin: nobody.
A deleted reply does not keep the ball with the manager, and replies from an earlier revision cycle do not count, so reopening as a revision correctly returns the ball to the assignees with nothing set by hand.
Replies and the official response
A reply is a discrete record, not text appended to the question. It carries a body (up to 10,000 characters), attachments, an author, a channel, a timestamp, and an independently settable official flag.
More than one reply may be official. When several are, the newest live official reply is the answer of record, because the latest disposition is the one that stands.
Deleting a reply is an ADMIN action and is permanent from every product surface. The body is cleared and the reply is hidden from everyone, including admins, while the audit trail survives on the record. If the deleted reply held the official response of an archived revision cycle, that archived copy is redacted in the same write, and the history block then reads "removed" rather than "never given".
Not everyone sees every reply
The project setting "Only show official response to Standard and Read Only users" is on by default. With it on, a viewer who is not an RFIs ADMIN and does not hold Act as RFI Manager sees only the replies marked official. The omitted replies are left out entirely rather than shown as a count, because a count is itself a disclosure, and the record tells the viewer the thread was narrowed.
The same rule applies to the PDF. Asking for the full thread cannot widen what a
restricted viewer gets; the official=true option can only ever narrow it further.
Revisions
When a closed RFI needs to be asked again, use reopen as a revision rather than a plain reopen. The RFI returns to Open, and:
- The question and the official response that stood at closing are snapshotted into the revision history, along with who answered and when.
- The number does not change. A revision is the same question asked again, and
renumbering it would break every markup, transmittal, and email that already cites
it. The register shows the revision beside the number, as
RFI-014 (Rev 1). - Replies from the previous cycle stay on the record but stop counting toward the new cycle, so the RFI correctly reads as unanswered again.
A cycle that closed with no official response is recorded as exactly that, which is a real outcome rather than a data error.
An RFI carries at most 20 archived cycles. Past that, the reopen is refused in plain language rather than failing later as a storage error.
Reopening as a revision is only available from Closed. A Closed-Draft was never issued, so it has no answered cycle to archive; asking for a revision there is refused.
Attachments
RFI-level attachments and reply attachments are both references to files that already live in the project, not fresh uploads stored on the RFI. An RFI carries at most 25 attachment references. Every reference is checked against the project before it is accepted, and the provenance (who attached it, and when) is stamped on the server, never taken from the request.
On an Autodesk-linked project, attachments are refused. The authoritative copy of that RFI lives in ACC and there is no way to push a file there, so a reference accepted in Struxen would exist on the local mirror and nowhere else. The refusal says so and tells you to attach the file to the RFI in ACC instead.
Recycle bin
Recycling an RFI is a soft delete. It keeps its lifecycle state, so an RFI recycled while Open comes back Open. A recycled RFI holds nobody's ball and appears in no register view except the bin.
Only an RFIs ADMIN can open the bin or restore from it.
Export
- One RFI as a PDF. Two variants, the full thread or official responses only.
- Several at once. Select rows in the register and use Export PDF. Each selected RFI downloads as its own document, and the toast reports how many succeeded and names any that did not.
- The whole log. The RFI log lives in Reports, as a PDF or a CSV, and applies the same filters, search, and sort the register is showing. Any format other than PDF or CSV is refused rather than quietly falling back.
Every one of these respects the private-RFI rule and the official-responses-only setting, applied before a single row reaches the document. The reply counts printed are the counts that viewer can open.
The log export is capped at 2,000 rows. Past that it is served short with a warning band on page one of the PDF, "Partial log" in every footer, and a trailing note in the CSV.
Reports also carries an RFI response-times report.
Autodesk-linked projects
On a project linked to Autodesk Construction Cloud, creating an RFI creates it in ACC using your own Autodesk connection, so ACC records you as the author, and then mirrors the result into Struxen. You need to have connected your own Autodesk account; the project's connection is not enough.
Local edits never push back. See Integrations.
Limits
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Subject | 500 characters |
| Question and reply body | 10,000 characters each |
| Attachment references per RFI | 25 |
| Custom field value | 255 characters |
| Number prefix | 30 characters |
| Archived revision cycles | 20 |
| Register export rows | 2,000 |
| Register page size | 50 by default, 200 maximum |
Troubleshooting
"That RFI does not exist" on a link a colleague sent you. The RFI is private and you are not on it. Private records answer 404 rather than 403 on purpose. Ask to be added to the assignees or the distribution list, or ask an RFIs admin.
The RFI you created came back as a draft when you asked for it to be issued. Issuing at create time needs ADMIN on RFIs or the Act as RFI Manager grant. The RFI exists; ask the manager to issue it.
The reply thread looks short. The project has "Only show official response to Standard and Read Only users" enabled and you hold neither RFIs ADMIN nor Act as RFI Manager. You are seeing the official replies only, and the record says so.
"Attachments are supported on native RFIs only." The project is linked to Autodesk Construction Cloud. Attach the file to the RFI in ACC.
"Connect your Autodesk account to create RFIs." The project is ACC-linked and your personal Autodesk connection is missing or expired. Reconnect from Account Admin, then retry.
Reopen as a revision is refused. Either the RFI is Closed-Draft, which was never issued and so has nothing to revise, or it already carries 20 archived cycles.
Sorting a column did not re-order the whole project. Only Number, Subject, and Due re-query from the endpoint. Every other column, Status included, sorts the rows currently loaded, and the register says so when pages remain unloaded. Filter first, then sort.
The register says the list stopped at a limit. The project holds more RFIs than one read returns. The counts above the table still cover everything; narrow with a filter to get a complete list.