Maintenance · Daily operations · 7 min read

Create, approve, schedule and assign work orders

Create a job directly, approve it, set a planned time and give it to a technician.

Before you begin

• The asset must exist and must not be Decommissioned or Disposed. A job on such an asset is refused: 'That asset is no longer in service.'
• You need maintenance.workorder.create to create. Approving needs maintenance.request.approve. Scheduling and assigning need maintenance.workorder.assign.
• Technicians must be set up under Maintenance > Configuration > Technicians.

Create a work order

1. Open Maintenance > Maintenance > Work Orders.
2. Click New Work Order.
3. Choose the Asset. Criticality, branch, cost centre, project and team are copied from the asset.
4. Type the Issue, for example Replace condenser fan motor.
5. Choose the Maintenance Type. Corrective, Emergency and Breakdown are repairs.
6. Set the Priority. Urgent jobs also show under Operations > Breakdowns.
7. Optionally choose Team and Technician, Planned Start, Planned Finish and Estimated Hours.
8. Click Create.

The job gets a number (WO-00001 style) and status Draft. Most jobs come from approved requests; see Report an issue and handle requests. Preventive plans create theirs automatically.

Approve

1. Open the work order.
2. Click More > Approve. The status goes from Draft to Approved.

Approval is required only if the administrator ticked Work orders need approval before they are scheduled or started. With it on, a Draft job cannot be scheduled, assigned or started. The messages are 'Approve the work order before scheduling it.', '...before assigning it.' and '...before starting it.'

Schedule

1. Click More > Schedule.
2. Enter Planned Start (required) and Planned Finish.
3. Confirm. The status becomes Scheduled and the job appears on Planning > Maintenance Calendar.

A planned finish before the start is refused: 'It cannot finish before it starts.' An open job whose planned finish has passed shows a red Overdue chip.

Assign

1. Click Assign and choose the Technician (required).
2. Confirm. The status becomes Assigned and the technician's user gets a bell notification.

If you reassign a job that is already running, the first technician's hours stop and are costed, and a new timer starts for the second technician.

Check the load before you assign

Open Maintenance > Planning > Workload, choose the start date, and read the Load % for each technician. It compares planned hours with 8 hours per working day over seven days. Over 100 % shows red. The weekend used is Friday and Saturday.

What happens next

The technician sees the job in My Work and starts it: Run a job as a technician. The job shows on the dashboard tiles and on the queue pills of the Work Orders list: Open, My Work, Overdue, Emergency, In Progress, Waiting Parts, Waiting Vendor, On Hold, Preventive, Corrective, Shutdown, Completed, Closed, All.

Good to know

• You can change the asset on a job only while it is Draft or Approved.
• Tasks are added on the Tasks tab with Add Task (task text, planned hours, optional technician).
• Some details, such as the vendor, contract, project, cost centre and meter, cannot be edited on the work order screen today. They are copied from the asset or the plan.
• To cancel, reopen or close a job, see Complete, close, reopen and cancel.