Introduction
Welcome to Rico! This onboarding guide is designed for users who use Rico to create planning assessments and reports. It outlines the core functionality, advanced features, and common troubleshooting tips for each part of the Rico workflow.
By the end of onboarding, you should understand how to:
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Create and navigate a project
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Use Rico functionality to perform technical and qualitative assessments
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Produce high-quality assessment reports in Rico.
Projects Page
Core Functionality
- Navigate into your live projects.
- Search for past projects.
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Create, assign, and duplicate projects using the Action column.
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Switch between “My Projects”, “Everyone's Projects” or select a specific user to view their project list.
Advanced Tips
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Use the Actions column to assign projects to colleagues, duplicate projects, change your project status or create a project snapshot.
Troubleshooting
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Can’t see a project? → Switch to “Everyone's Projects”
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Can’t see other's projects? → Check your role permissions, they may not allow for this
Helpful resources
🔗 Using Reassign and Project Snapshots for Review and Versioning
In-Project Interface
Core Functionality
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Navigate workflow steps.
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Add sub-workflows and reports with the Report Adder (where you have this step - some workflows are fully configured by default).
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Preview final report output in the Preview Tab.
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Work is automatically saved as you go.
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Reports can be downloaded any time by clicking Download in the Preview Tab.
Advanced Tips
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Use “Jump to current page” in Preview Tab to quickly navigate to the place in the Report Output you're editing in the workflow.
Troubleshooting
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Can't see the Preview Tab? → This should appear as a blue tab on the right edge of your screen
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Workflow disappears / gets greyed out when you open the Preview Tab? → On larger screens you can see both the Workflow and the Preview Tab at the same time. On smaller screens you can adjust the zoom of your browser page (zoom out) until you are able to see and edit both in the same view.
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Preview Tab not showing the right report? → Workflows may produce multiple reports. Check the drop down at the top of the Preview Tab to ensure you're looking at the right report.
Helpful resources
🔗 Overview of Workflows, Modules and Report Templates
Introduction to Technical and Qualitative Assessments in Rico
Rico is built around a dual assessment structure that separates technical assessments from qualitative assessments, each serving a distinct but complementary purpose. Before going into detail it's important to understand how these two different groups of functionality work.
Technical Assessment
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Structured and checklist-driven, this part of the workflow helps users identify, record, and interpret all relevant statutory planning requirements.
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Comprises five key components:
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Subject Site / GIS Integration: Identifies the subject site for the project and relevant planning layers/overlays and spatial features.
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Checklist: Ensures all potentially relevant issues are flagged for attention.
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Plan Document Adder: Adds documents to be assessed (with Rules and Provisions Assessment below).
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Plan Assessment: Assesses consistency with planning provisions and include provisions with statuses.
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Technical assessments are typically output into a standalone technical report. However, all components of the technical assessment can also be referenced in the main qualitative assessments using the @ or / functions (more on that further down).
Qualitative Assessment
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Qualitative assessments are typically output into a narrative report that interprets and justifies effects and outcomes.
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In Rico, this is usually predominantly prepared using text fields tied to workflow steps.
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Users can embed technical assessment content into the qualitative narrative for clarity, detail and justification.
This structure:
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Establishes the technical foundation needed to make sound planning judgments
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Addresses common gaps in underlying understanding, especially for newer or less experienced planners
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Creates a traceable record of decision logic for reviewers and decision-makers
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Aligns with Rico functionality
Technical Assessments
Subject Site / GIS Integration
Core Functionality
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Add the subject site using address, legal description, or title
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View available site information (e.g. legal information, and planning information such as spatial overlays and planning layers where available).
Advanced Tips
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Draw Custom Site Boundaries for sites without clear legal boundary.
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Add multiple parcels and merge these when adding site to consolidate into one 'site'.
Troubleshooting
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Can’t find the site? → Use LINZ
🔗 Using the Subject Site Search
Checklist
Core Functionality
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Identify relevant considerations and trigger relevant Plan Documents (that can be added for assessment)
Advanced Tips
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Use checklists to rule issues in/out—save the need to duplicate this in qualitative assessments (i.e. you don't need to say things you've considered and are not relevant as it's documented in the checklist).
Troubleshooting
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No considerations shown? → Confirm checklist is configured correctly (questions and considerations are configurable)
Plan Document Adder
Core Functionality
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Add Plan Documents for assessment steps below (in addition to adding these in Subject Site/GIS Integration and Checklist steps)
Troubleshooting
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Site must be added before documents appear in some configurations.
Advanced Tips
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Add National Plan Documents on this page.
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Additional Plan Documents relating to Plan Changes also available for assessment where these have changes with legal effect (more on assessing Plan Changes here).
🔗 How Plan Considerations Work
Plan Assessment
Core Functionality
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The Plan Assessment combines different assessment functions:
- Including provisions – items in a plan are referred to as provisions. To include one in your assessment, click the blank box alongside it.
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Including provisions with statuses – identifies provisions with applicable statuses as defined by the plan. These classify elements of the proposal as requiring resource consent or being permitted.
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Compliance checks – you can mark compliance against any provision, except those with a status. To add a compliance assessment, click the dropdown on the right-hand side of the select box and choose the relevant option.
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Add comments where useful to support your reasoning.
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Produce plan assessment tables in technical assessment report. Tables can be inserted into text fields (discussed later) to support qualitative assessments.
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Advanced Tips
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Sub-provisions are not included by default. Click a sub-provision individually to include it, or hold Shift and click to include all sub-provisions beneath a given provision. The same Shift-click action works in reverse to de-select all sub-provisions at once.
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Only assess provisions relevant to the proposal—this isn’t about assessing the entire plan.
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Use the question mark (?) icon to mark a rule as "Undetermined" for review later.
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Avoid overusing "Not Applicable"—only use it where something technically applies but clearly has no relevance.
Helpful resources
🔗 Including Provisions and Assessing Compliance in Your Plan Assessment
Qualitative Assessments
Text Fields
Core Functionality
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Write narrative sections using structured text fields.
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Use Include/Exclude to toggle optional content being included in reports.
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Format with headings, tables, lists, figures using the options on the tool bar.
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Use the import function (explained further below) to start assessments with templated responses and assessments from past projects.
Advanced Tips
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Insert footnotes and cross-references where needed using the Insert Reference functions.
Troubleshooting
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Can't see templates to import or import option? → When a text field is empty, these show by default. When there is text already, you can access this functionality selecting the 'Insert' menu in the toolbar > 'Import'.
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Can’t exclude a field? → It’s likely mandatory (this can be set as part of your configuration)
🔗 Using Text Fields, Styles, Formatting and Todos
🔗 Using Lists
🔗 Creating and Editing Tables in Text Fields
🔗 Adding and Inserting Figures
Import Function
Core Functionality
- Import information from the same step, from a past project
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Import past project content directly into a text field or use it as a reference
- Choose relevant sections - toggle on/off any sections you do not want to pull into your reports
Advanced Tips
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Change filter in Select source to "All Projects" if past projects aren’t appearing, or if you want to view your colleagues past projects
Troubleshooting
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Import not working? → Ensure content has been added and saved in the source project
Inserting References (from Technical Assessment steps)
Core Functionality
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Use @ and / to insert project data, plan references, plan assessments, figures or appendices into text fields
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Plan assessment tables (smart components) are live and link directly to your plan assessment. If you update or add further provisions to your plan assessment at a later date, your table will automatically update to match.
Advanced Tips
- Nothing appearing from the / command? → Ensure the command is used on a new line
- Delete any tags you don't want to show in your plan assessment tables. By default, all tags are included.
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Once your plan assessment table is in your report, you can add new comments or edit existing ones directly in the table.
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For new comments, hover over the provision you'd like to comment against and select the speech bubble icon. Start typing to make your comment, or import a comment from a previous project.
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For existing comments, click anywhere in the comment box and edit the text.
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Adjust filters using the gear icon to refine what’s inserted (plan documents or activity statuses)
Troubleshooting
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Reference appearing blank? → Check if the source component in the technical assessment is complete
🔗 Using the '/' Command to Insert Plan Assessment Tables
Final Tip
We customise Rico to your organisation. If you think the configuration can be improved, contact Rico or a nominated 'Template Owner' within your organisation.
