Work Orders Setup
This topic describes how to perform setup tasks related to the Work Order system.
How to add a work order layer to your map
The first thing you have to do before you can use work orders is add a special work order layer to your map. You add this layer to your map as you would add any layer. Click the layers button, then click "Add" then select "Work Orders" as the layer type. Note that you can only have one work order layer on your map.
Customize the form layout for ALL work orders
As with any other layer you can add your own custom fields to the work order form. For example you might want to add a field to record the materials cost associated with each work order. See Add/Remove fields for instructions. When you do go to edit the field layout of this special layer you will notice that there are several fields that you are not allowed to modify or remove. These are special fields required by this special work orders layer. For the most part you can only add additional fields. But, read the next paragraph before you do this.
Customizing the form layout for CERTAIN work orders
Before you add a bunch of custom fields to the work order form you need to make sure you understand how work order types work. Fields added to your work order form using Add/Remove fields (described above) will apply to ALL work orders. But fields added using the type manager will apply only to certain types of work orders allowing you to create different custom forms for different types of work.
Permission Setup
Any users who will need to be able to create new work orders should be granted edit permission for the work order layer. You can grant this permission using the regular User Permissions menu item. However, whenever the creator of the work order assigns other users to a task, those other users will also be automatically permitted to edit that work order even though they do not have global edit permission across the entire layer. See work order permissions for complete details.
Copy Values From Asset To Work Order
This is an advanced topic that talks about how you can auto populate certain fields of your work order with values taken from the asset that you associated the work order with. For example, you have a water meter layer that records the address of each meter. And you have an address field in your work order layer. Whenever you create a new work order and indicate that it is associated with a certain meter, you would like the address of that meter to be automatically added to the work order. There are two things you have to do to make this work. First, the field name on the work order form must exactly match the field name of the asset layer. For example the field is called "Address" on both the meter and work order layers. Second, on the Address field setup screen for the work order layer you need to enter the word COPY as the default value. This tells the work order form to copy the value from the associated asset for this field, if the associated layer has a field by the same name.