Pathway

This week we gained our login to Pathway, Masterton's website specifically for individual customers. People have raved about Pathway and it's won all sorts of awards, so I was really looking forward to seeing what all the hoopla was about.

I work in the internet industry. Web pages and applications are my lifeblood. And honestly, Pathway left me a bit underwhelmed. There's no doubt that it's useful, and I'm sure its usefulness will improve as we go further in the milestones, but five minutes of playing around with it highlighted a few flaws.

First, the good: Pathway is a document repository. Every document created in the course of your building is scanned and uploaded to Pathway. Top marks for that. Secondly, there will be photos taken of the construction (once it begins) and those photos will be uploaded to Pathway as well.

Each stage of Pathway is called a milestone, and clicking on each milestone shows you the steps to be completed in that milestone. But there's no way to tell exactly what step you're currently on -- and by the time you've gotten a login to Pathway, you're usually already on the second milestone -- at least we were. As it is, I think we're going to end up using Pathway as a document and photo repository, and then using Google Documents to track our progress, so we can cross off the steps we've already accomplished.

Next post: Bricks!