Setting Up Workflows For Work Orders
Workflows is an enterprise-level feature added during the 3.0.1 release.
New automated workflows put you in complete control of your work order assignments, notifications, equipment status changes, priorities, due dates, and more. Build your own condition logic and specify the action to take place. A few examples could be:
- E-mail a particular person when work orders are marked Urgent
- Automatically assign work orders to a particular technician if equipment is a particular type, brand, model, etc.
- Automatically e-mail a particular person if work order total cost exceeds a value you specify.
- If equipment is in location X, automatically set work order assignee to a particular technician.
- If a work order is due within X days, automatically send an e-mail to a particular person.
These are just a few examples. Multiple conditions can be specified per work flow. The combinations are nearly endless! You may define up to 5 work order work flows.
In this article, we will provide more in-depth information on how to setup utilize this new feature.
Accessing Workflows
To access the workflows section, click the gear icon on the top right and choose Workflows.
Here you will be presented with a list of existing Workflows.
You can click the blue New button on the top right to add a new Workflow. You can also click the name of any existing Workflow to modify or delete them.
Creating A New Workflow
After clicking the blue New button you will be presented with the New Workflow screen.
Name - Choose the name of your workflow.
Active - If this box is unchecked, the workflow will be considered inactive and any triggers or actions will be ignored.
Conditions - Set the values that 'trigger' the workflow. to be activated
Actions - Specify what you want done when the workflow is triggered.
Press Save on the bottom to save this workflow to the system.
Adding Conditions
Conditions are triggers that tell the system when to initiate the actions on the bottom. There are a number of conditions to choose from:
Work Order conditions look for WO-specific values as triggers for actions.
Equipment conditions look for equipment-specific values as triggers for actions.
Some brief descriptions of each condition can be found below:
Work Order Triggers
Assignee - If the assignee contains or does not contain a specific employee or vendor, perform an action.
Priority - If the WO is of a specific priority, such as HIGH or URGENT, perform an action.
Type - If the WO is of a specific type, such as General Maintenance or Electrical, perform an action.
Status - If the WO has a specific status, such as IN PROGRESS or ON HOLD, perform an action.
Due On - If the WO is due within a certain number of days, perform an action.
Scheduled On - If the WO scheduled date falls within a certain number of days, perform an action.
Total Cost - If the WO total cost exceeds a certain amount, perform an action.
Task Count - If the number of Tasks change on a Work Order, perform an action. This will be triggered if tasks are added or removed after the WO was initially saved, and can be used if you want to know that a WO was changed.
Equipment Triggers
Category - If a Work Order is created for equipment that belongs to a certain category, perform an action.
Location - If a Work Order is created for equipment that belongs to a certain location, perform an action.
Name - If a Work Order is created for equipment that has a specific name, or does/does not contain specific characters in the name, perform an action.
Make / Model / Type / Status - If a Work Order is created for equipment that matches a particular make, model, type or status, perform an action.
Ownership - If a Work Order is created for equipment with a specific ownership type (customer, leased, etc), perform an action.
Tag Array - This is related to the 'keywords' assigned to equipment. If a Work Order is created for equipment with certain keywords, perform an action.
AND / OR Conditions
Utilizing the AND and OR buttons will allow you to add multiple trigger conditions.
OR means that if EITHER condition is true, perform the action.
AND means that BOTH conditions must be true to perform any actions.
Here is an example of adding an OR condition:
If the Work Order priority is EITHER marked as URGENT or HIGH, then send the email out.
Here is an example of adding an AND condition:
If the Work Order priority is set to URGENT AND the location of the equipment is from Tampa Distribution, then perform an action.
Adding Actions
Click the blue +ACTION button to add a new action to your workflow.
Here is a list of available Actions.
If all conditions of the Workflow are met, then this action will occur.
In our example, we are sending emails out when the Work Order priority is set to URGENT. Note that you can click the +ACTION button again if you wish to add multiple actions to the same workflow.
Deleting Actions Or Conditions
You can remove any existing conditions or actions by using the red X button on the right hand side.
Deleting Workflows
Note that you can uncheck 'Active' under the Workflow name if you wish to turn it off. If you wish to remove the Workflow from your system completely, click the Delete button on the bottom when on the workflow detail screen.
FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
How many Workflows can I add?
Up to 5 workflows can be added to your account.
I don't have access to Workflows. What do I need to do?
Workflows is only available for Enterprise customers. Email our team at sales@mtcpro.com if you wish to upgrade your account from basic/premium to enterprise.
If I use the condition 'Within X Days' when does the workflow actually get processed?
Within X Day conditions are processed at 6am for your organization, which is based on the time zone selected on the Organization Profile screen.