Exciting updates coming in 2026!! AI-Assisted Product Builder on its way, for any product that we don’t yet have in our catalog! Launched in December 25, a Product Builder tool for manufacturers who don’t have digitized data (or have very few SKUs) – no spreadsheets, easy to use!
There are 5 different ways to add products to a Material List.The Cloning function easily enables consistency across project teams if you’ve curated a Master List (or Lists) of preferred products for that purpose. When creating a new List, you can copy (“clone”) an entire Master List in 2 clicks! You can also add / copy select products from other lists, from publicly “crowdsourced” lists or from our Infinite Catalog.
If you prefer to see a quick How-To Video instead of reading this, click here!
- CLICK “ADD PRODUCTS” BUTTON: Click the button to the right of the search bar. This will reveal a drop-down menu of options which are described below. Then…
- CHOOSE THE OPTION YOU WANT: Click on the option that you want from the drop-down menu. See below for list of all the options.
Each of the options below are shown in more detail in the sections that follow this summary.
Clone Another Material List (you can clone from a Master List or a Project list): This lets you copy an entire Material List in two clicks! This can be a Master List that your organization has curated for this purpose, or from a different project. Some create one Master List of Preferred Products but many create multiple. This is usually by sector (higher ed, K-12, hospitality, retail, etc) or by scope (interiors, structural systems, lighting). If you have more than one Master List (i.e., for scopes such as interiors, structure envelope, site,) you can clone various lists multiple times to build up an entirely new list, if desired. Once you clone a list, you can then edit and change items as you wish.
Add Products From Another Project (a.k.a. the Compare view): This option lets you open another Material List and view them side by side, so you can copy selected items from that list, instead of cloning an entire list. You can copy from a Master List or any other Project’s Material List. You can copy in either / both directions, from original to the 2nd list, or vice versa.
Add Products From Catalog: This lets you add products to a Material List directly from our Catalog. You will notice that in this view, when you hover over products, 3 dots appear. When you click on the 3 dots, you have a choice to Add the product OR you can start to Compare products. NOTE: this only works when you enter the catalog from within a Material List. If you go straight to the catalog directly, rather than from a Project’s Material List, you won’t see dots since the view is not tied to a project, you will only see the Compare function. Some users begin creating Master Lists by going to the catalog and filtering for C2C (Cradle to Cradle), HPD (at 100ppm) or Declare and “Red List Free” – and then use the “Add All” button to automatically start with the healthiest options that have certification.
Create New Product: If you can’t find a product from our rapidly growing catalog, you can manually add it. Any products created by users are automatically added to our Catalog (basic info. only, nothing private or attributable). These show up in the catalog with the tag, “User Entered” until they are vetted by our team on the backend. We will be updating this function soon to incorporate AI and scraping so you can just paste in the URL of the product from the manufacturer’s page so it just scrapes all the design and performance details!
Import From a Spreadsheet (this is not a drop-down option, but we can do this for you): If you have been tracking products in spreadsheets or other tools (and can export to CSV), simply email these to us at [email protected]. We will transform that data into our platform, so you don’t lose past work.
BONUS: this is how we acquire product data for you:
Digital Import (this is not a drop-down option, and is specific to manufacturers): We offer the best data management services in the industry, for the lowest cost. We set up a direct digital connection (called an API) to the manufacturers internal IT systems. This means that any change or update they make is automatically updated on BuildingEase. Even better – we set up a 2-way connection so we can also send certification data back TO the manufacturer so that info is automatically current and updated on their website. We also port data out to all other platforms. The certifications in our system come directly from the sources and we link them to the products, we do not rely on the manufacturers to provide 3rd party certifications, so we can guarantee accuracy.
