Requests, jobs and appointments
Three different things live under Maintenance, and it helps to keep them apart.
This | Is |
|---|---|
A request | Somebody telling you something is wrong. Raised from the app or the dashboard, and not yet a commitment to do anything. |
A job | Work you have booked in: what needs doing, where, by when, and whose it is. |
An appointment | A visit on a date, such as a pest control call or a gas safety check. |
A request becomes a job when you decide to act on it. Nothing is lost in between, which is the point.
The board, column by column
The default view is a board, and work moves left to right. Drag a card to move it, and the app asks for anything the next column needs.
Requests In. What has just been reported. Nobody has looked at it yet.
Triage. You have seen it and you are deciding. Setting the urgency here is what gives the eventual job its deadline.
Job Booked. It is real work now, with a date and, if you have set one, an owner.
On Hold. Started but blocked, with a reason.
Completed. Done, with notes, photos and what it cost.
Rejected. Not going ahead, with a reason.
There is also a table view if you would rather scan a list, and filters for site, owner, area type, urgency, trade, age and free text. The filters live in the address bar, so a filtered board is a link you can send somebody.
How urgent it is sets the deadline
Every job gets a deadline from its priority, worked out at the site you booked it at, so a clock change never moves it.
Priority | Deadline |
|---|---|
Urgent | 24 hours |
High | 3 days |
Medium | 10 days |
Low | 30 days |
Past the deadline the job is flagged as overdue on the board and you are alerted once, overnight. You can set a deadline by hand if the standard one does not fit. Moving the visit date does not move the deadline, which is deliberate: rescheduling work is not the same as being given longer to do it.
When work is blocked
A repair waiting on a part is not the same as a repair nobody has touched, so put it on hold and say why: waiting for parts, a quote, access, the landlord, or an approval. Held jobs keep their place in the list, greyed with the reason on the card, and the person waiting still gets their reminders.
Rejected is not cancelled
Rejecting a job records that you looked at it and decided not to do it, with a reason. It is kept separate from Completed so your completion rate is honest: work you chose not to do is not work you finished.
Appointments
Use Appointments for the visits that happen on a date: a service engineer, pest control, an inspection, PAT testing. Many of these can be set up for you from the planned maintenance catalogue rather than booked one at a time.
It all shows on the calendar
Maintenance routines, appointments and booked jobs appear together in Planned, and in the Month View calendar alongside your tasks.
Where to go next
Areas and rooms for filing work by place rather than by equipment.
Assigning maintenance work for giving a job to a person, a team or a contractor.
Planned maintenance for the checks that should happen on a cycle.
Maintenance reporting for spend, backlog and repeat faults.