Work Orders

A simple work order management system can be added to your map in the form of a special layer.  This work order system is designed to manage a list of things-to-do like repairs, customer complaints, daily or weekly monitoring, and even major projects.  You can create tasks and schedule them for the future or immediate action.  You can assign tasks to specific people on your team.  You can record detailed instructions for each task along with pictures.  Those carrying out the tasks can record their daily progress along with detailed as-built notes describing the final outcome.  You can monitor the status of all past, present, and future tasks through a calendar with tasks color coded by status.  And you can even setup recurring tasks on the calendar.  You might use it primarily to keep track of a long list of things to do.  Or you might use it only to keep track of things done.  See list of example tasks below.

In many ways, these work orders function as a regular layer on your map where every task is a feature and you can click, browse, sort and search these features as you would with any layer.  But there is a lot of special functionality found in the work order layer that you won't find in other layers.  See notes and links below for details.

Some Key Topics To Understand

First Time Setup See this topic if this work order functionality has not yet been added to your map or if you would like to customize how the work order system works for your company.

Calendar View See this topic for a description of the work order calendar screen.  This calendar screen acts as the main control panel for your daily interaction with work orders.

Work Order Form This topic describes the work order form.  This form is where you describe each task and where you, or your teammates, record the status and completion notes.

Work Order Permissions Permissions are managed a little different for work orders compared to other layers.  This makes it possible for more people to collaborate on a task while controlling which aspect of each task can be modified by which people.

Custom Forms (aka. "Work Order Form Types") One of the more powerful aspects of the work order system is its ability to create different forms for different types of tasks.  See this topic for more information about how to create and use these different form types.

Example Tasks

Here are some example tasks that could be tracked in the work order system.

• Regular maintenance tasks such as daily or weekly inspections, or readings.  You can even create custom forms for each type of inspection or work.
• Customer complaints such as usage spikes, pot holes or suspected leaks.
• Planned repairs such as fixing a leak or replacing a valve.
• New construction such as setting a new meter or adding a new line.
• Other: Add tasks to the calendar to remind you of just about anything such as report due dates, company meetings, etc.

How To Create A New Work Order

1. Click the Work Order button on the main menu to take you to the work order calendar screen.
2. Make sure that the current date is selected on the calendar and then click the "New" button.  (The work order will be given a "Date Planned" matching the currently selected date on the calendar)
3. Click on a feature on the map that you want to assign this work order to.  Or if this work order is not associated with a certain asset then you can just click on any map location that best represents where this work will be done.  Confirm your selection in the box that appears.
4. If you have defined a list of different work order form types then you will be asked to indicate what type of work order this should be.  Otherwise, a generic work order form type will be used.
5. A blank work order form will be displayed.  At a minimum you will want to provide a title and description of the work to be performed. You can also assign the work order to specific people, assign it a future start date (it defaults to today), and other options.
6. Click "Add" at the top of the form.
7. Click the refresh button on the calendar screen to see the newly added task.

How To Update The Progress Of A Work Order

1. Each person on your staff can view the list of work orders assigned to them on their phone or computer by logging into their map, going to the work order calendar page, and clicking on the "Browse" tab.  This lists only the work orders assigned to the person who is logged in.
2. They can click on any work order and change its status to started.  They can also provide a description of what work they performed, record any readings or observations, attach pictures from the field, and then eventually mark the status as completed.  This process might take 5 minutes or 5 days depending on the size of the task.  See the work order permissions topic for more about which fields can only be updated by the person who created the work order, and which ones can be updated by the people the work order was assigned to.
3. Anyone can monitor the progress of the work orders on the color coded calendar.  Each work order is colored according to whether it is scheduled, started, completed, or approved.  Approved work orders are not shown on the map display but still show up on the calendar and history.

Optional Printed Work Orders Method

If you prefer to print out your work orders and hand them to the field staff you can do that.  Just open each work order one at a time and select "Print" from the action menu at the bottom of the form.  Then when they return the completed paper you can select the work order from the map and type in the information yourself and change the status to complete.  

How To Create Recurring Tasks

If you have a task that needs to be performed daily, weekly, monthly, or at some other specific interval you can setup a recurring work order just once and it will appear on the calendar on all future dates.  The process is very similar to the "How To Create A New Work Order" steps described above but you click the "New Recurring" button instead.  An additional screen will prompt you for the rules defining how the task should repeat.  The calendar view will show a reminder on every day that this recurring task is scheduled to be performed.  To actually perform the task each day you click on this reminder and then click "Start".  Clicking start actually creates a new number work work order to record the work or readings associated with just this day's work.

Assigning Work Orders To Assets

When you assign a work order to specific features, such as a lift station.  Then in the future when you click on that lift station, you can see a list of all past, present, and future work orders assigned to that feature.  This list will be shown in a special field added to the bottom of every feature form.  You don't have to add this special field to your layers.  It just automatically appears whenever a work order layer is present on your map.  You can also create new work orders directly from here so that it is not necessary to go to the work order calendar screen.  So if you want to create a work order to repair a pump you could just click on the pump, scroll down to the work order field, click "show", and click "add".  Work orders created this way will still show up on the calendar.

Work Order Layer On or Off

Since you will likely accumulate hundreds and thousands of work orders over time it could become a very busy layer that covers your map with dots.  Unless you have a need to see all of these past work order locations it is recommended that you just leave this layer turned off.  Even with the layer turned off you can still browse the list of work orders in the calendar or list and you can still locate them on the map.