A maintenance log delivered by a firm easily runs to a hundred tasks. Retyping them one by one is not an option, and it is not what CondoAide asks for: the log is imported, and the calendar is built from what the document already says.
Importing the log
- Open Maintenance Log in the left-hand menu.
- Click Import carnet.
- If your syndicate has several buildings, pick the one the log covers.
- Drop the file. Excel and PDF are both accepted; prefer the Excel if your firm gave you both.
- If the workbook holds several maintenance tables, choose the one to analyse.
- Review the list of tasks found, tick what you want to import, then confirm.
Nothing reaches your calendar before that confirmation, and the success screen offers Undo this import if the result is not what you wanted.
Why Excel rather than PDF
A workbook carries cells: the task description, its frequency and its month are read exactly as they were written. A PDF has to be rebuilt from a layout — columns, line wraps, headers repeated from page to page. CondoAide does that, and does it well, but reading a workbook remains the surer path.
You do not have to enter the due dates
This is the point the screen explains poorly, and it is worth saying plainly: a maintenance task does not carry a date, it carries a cadence. "Clean the surfaces, once a year, in June" is not an appointment, it is a rule that repeats. A maintenance programme reduced to a list of fixed dates stops being a programme the moment the first year is over.
At import, CondoAide reads three things on each row — the frequency, the month given, and the years the log ticks — and derives the next due date. For a hundred correctly read tasks, there is no date to type at all.
The rows that need a decision
Some rows arrive unticked and cannot be selected as they are. This is not an arbitrary block: it is a question the document does not answer.
The frequency was not recognised. An empty column, a note in prose, a wording specific to the firm. Pick the cadence from the list shown on the row and the task becomes selectable.
The frequency is a range. "Every 3 to 5 years" is not a cadence, it is an interval the board has to settle. CondoAide offers both bounds instead of picking one for you.
The anchor month is ambiguous. When the log lists months that the detected cadence would not reproduce exactly, CondoAide shows the months listed, the months it would plan, and asks which month to anchor on.
The counter under the list shows how many tasks are still waiting on a decision.
When a lot of rows need a decision
When a good part of the log arrives with no readable cadence, the problem is upstream in the file rather than in the screen. Open the workbook and look at the frequency column: if it is empty, merged, or written in free-form sentences, fix it there — the usual wordings of a Quebec maintenance log are read directly — then run the import again. Fixing one column in Excel takes minutes; answering row by row in the review screen takes far longer.
After the import
The tasks join the maintenance calendar, grouped by category and placed on the months they come round. The Maintenance Log page then flags overdue tasks and those approaching their due date.