Using Jobs
Business
Table of Contents
What are Jobs?
Jobs are like Requests, but they can have a more complex workflow. For instance, Jobs can be allocated to field staff on the basis of the skills and equipment required to complete a Job. Jobs, like Requests, can also be connected to your organization’s assets. Jobs also support automatic time tracking and can be made a repeating job using a Recurring Schedule. Unlike requests, the term jobs cannot be replaced with another term.
Jobs are allocated to teams, not to individual staff members.
Job Workflow
A job goes through the following process:
It is initially created manually or automatically using a schedule. The job can be manually allocated to a team and hence added to the team’s Job Queue to be Accepted, or it can be set to Automate Allocation and will show up in the queues for any matching teams. Jobs should be allocated on the basis of skills and equipment required.
It can be Accepted from the queue by a team member, converting it to Assigned. The field staff are not shown jobs that are in another teams’ queue.
When the team member actively starts work on the job, they Check In. If they stop, say for lunch or at the end of the day, they Check Out and then Check In again when they return to the job.
The team member can also change the job to On Hold, if they are awaiting parts, staff, etc, or have some other reason for being blocked on the job.
Once the job is finished, the team member marks it as Completed.
A team member can Reject the job at any time. This is useful if the job requires a different skill set or equipment to the one originally specified. A new team can then be assigned and the process starts again.
If you have a small number of teams, and most teams and can do most tasks, it is as simple as setting up your teams with a depot and turning on queueing. Then you can manually assign teams to jobs as they are created.
If you have a large number of teams or you need to match jobs to vehicles, machines, tools, and/or qualifications that only some teams hold, then use the Equipment and Accreditation options to narrow down the list of teams that your controllers can choose from when assigning a job. This controls who can carry out a job.
If you need to break up who can manage particular types of jobs then this can be done using the form permissions.
Job Assignees - Configuring Depots, Teams, and Users
Look at how Rey sets up Gruntify to match how the Beautiful Homes staff work currently. Notice that accreditations are attached to the staff member, equipment to teams, and teams to depots.
The City North team has a mulcher available to them, which the City South team doesn’t, so any jobs that need a large amount of mulching should be covered by the City North team, even if it is on the southside.
Setting up Regular Jobs - Assets and Recurring Schedules
Requests and Jobs all need a location. This may set using a latitude/longitude mark on the map, or via an asset. An asset is a geographically based record that models a real-world entity, such as a garden bed, a road, or a power pole.
Assets often need regular inspection and/or maintenance. Recurring schedules make it easy to create a Job that is repeated on a regular basis, with controls that allow you to vary the schedule as needed. For simplicity, Assets and Recurring Schedules will not be covered in the video below but will have their own detailed videos.
In this movie, the team assigned the work has been referred to as “Resources”. As of the release 2nd June 2021 (20210602), they are now referred to as “Assignees”. This change is on both the Admin Portal and in the Mobile app.
This video will show you screen by screen how to set up jobs in Gruntify.
If you are working your way through the Getting Started tutorial trail, go on to Step 7: Introducing the Mobile App.