Work orders

A work order is a visit to a customer: an inspection, a service, a repair. It moves from state to state, always through a named action — never by changing a status by hand — and every action is traced.

The life of a work order

Where work orders come from

• Field › Work orders › New work order: customer, site, type, priority — and, if you already know them, the date, the technician and the assets concerned. Dated, it starts Scheduled and joins the "Unassigned" queue; with a technician, it starts Assigned.
• Contracts: every night, the visits planned by active contracts create themselves, already dated (see Contracts and maintenance).
• The portal: a customer requests a job; managers and dispatchers are notified, and the request arrives as a draft (see The customer portal).
• A defect: "Create the repair work order" from the defect pre-fills the customer, the site, the asset and the priority, taken from the severity (see Defects and quotes).
• Import, at the start, to bring in your history.

Scheduling and assigning

Assigning means giving the work order to a technician for a time slot. Three paths lead there:

• Field › Dispatch board: drag a card from the "Unassigned" queue onto a technician's row, at the wanted time; move a block to change the time or the technician.
• The record: "Schedule" asks for the start date (and the end date, if you know it), then "Assign" asks for the technician — one step at a time. Without a date, or without a technician, the action is refused and the message says what is missing.
• The form: choosing a technician when creating or editing the work order assigns it.

The "Unassigned" queue shows first the work orders of the week on display, then those without a date, then the others, from the most to the least urgent. It stops at fifty cards: beyond that, its title gives the full count ("50 of 141") and a link opens the complete list.

A technician who is absent during the slot (leave, sickness) cannot receive the work order: the refusal gives the dates of the absence, so you can reschedule without guessing.

On site

The technician runs the visit from their field app:

1. they report leaving, then arriving;
2. they go through each asset's checklist; a failed checkpoint creates a defect on the asset when the checklist template says so for that checkpoint ("A failure creates a defect");
3. they fit parts from their van;
4. they have the customer sign on the screen;
5. they complete the work order.

A work order cannot be completed while a required checkpoint of a checklist is still unanswered: the refusal says how many are missing.

What happens by itself at the end

As soon as a work order is completed, without anyone clicking:

• the signed PDF report is produced and stored on the record — not before: a work order that is not completed has no report;
• the time spent becomes a billable item, next to the parts fitted (counted as soon as they are fitted);
• the next due date of each covered asset is recalculated;
• managers are notified;
• if the work order was repairing defects, they move to "Resolved".

Once completed, the record closes

A work order that is completed, validated or signed carries the customer's acknowledgement and its billable lines:

• it can no longer be edited (the "Edit" button disappears);
• it can no longer be cancelled, and it can no longer go to the bin;
• only the parts fitted can still be regularised from the record, until validation.

Before the visit is finished, "Cancel" is a business action: the work order stays on file, with its history. "Delete" sends it to the bin, from which it can be restored.

Validating

The manager reviews the completed work order — checklist, parts, report — then validates it. That action is what makes it appear in Invoices › To be invoiced (see Invoicing).

The report

The work order's record keeps every version of its report:

• "Download" the current version;
• "Regenerate report" produces a new one without erasing the previous ones — useful after a part has been regularised;
• "Send to customer" emails it to the customer's address.

These actions only appear once the work order is completed: before that, the record says the report will be produced at the end.

The customer also finds the latest version in "My reports" on their portal. The report carries the reading of each checkpoint — "Yes", "2 bar", the expected range when a reading is non-compliant —, the parts fitted, the defects and the signature.