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Work Order Assignment Notifications and Confirmations

Work Order Assignment Notifications and Confirmations


Applies to QESTField Tests, QESTField Scheduler, QESTField Forms

This page describes the work order notification and confirmation process built into the QESTField products.

Contents

Overview

The QESTField products provide an automated work order notification and confirmation process that greatly improves the efficiency of the daily scheduling tasks by automating away the busy work and allowing the dispatcher to focus on any exceptions or unconfirmed work orders.

Notification and Confirmations

Notifying Technicians

Assigning a work order to a technician or modifying the assignment details of a work order will set the status of that work order to notification pending. So long as at least one work order has a notification pending status and all work orders are saved, the  button will be enabled.

Clicking on the  button will send notifications to the field staff that they need to confirm their schedule. Technicians will be notified via email or push notifications of the need to confirm the assigned work orders. More details on which notification type is used for each scenario are in the relevant section below. For details on confirming work orders in QESTField, see Confirming Work Orders.

The appearance of the notification button and whether or not it is enabled are dependent upon the status of the work orders in the timeline, as explained by the table below.

Appearance

Enabled/Disabled

Scenario

Appearance

Enabled/Disabled

Scenario

Disabled - notifications cannot be sent

No notifications are pending

Disabled - notifications cannot be sent

Notifications are pending but not all work order assignment changes have been saved.

Enabled - notifications can be sent

Notifications are pending and all assignment changes have been saved.

Changing any of the following work details on a work order will require a new notification to be issued for that work order:

  • Assigned field staff member

  • Project

  • Work instructions

  • Work date

  • Start time

The affected work order as well as the Notify button will indicate that new notifications are pending.

If a staff member cannot receive notifications at all, this will be noted directly underneath their name, as shown for Jill Tech below.

A field staff member will not be able to receive notifications if they:

  • Are not able to receive push notifications on the QESTField mobile app, and

  • Do not have an email address defined in QESTLab

See the Email vs. Push Notifications section for more details on when push notifications can be sent.

Reviewing Confirmation Status

Work orders can have the following statuses related to notifications.

Status

Appearance

Status

Appearance

Notification Pending

Confirmation Pending

Confirmed

Once notifications have been issued to field staff, the affected work orders will be indicated with a confirmation pending icon on the QESTField Scheduler timeline. Once work has been confirmed by the field staff member, the confirmed work orders will display a confirmed icon in the QESTField Scheduler the next time work order data is refreshed. Work order data will refresh periodically (every five minutes) or can be manually refreshed by clicking the refresh button .

If a work order remains on confirmation pending for an extended period of time, the field staff member should be contacted by other means to determine why the confirmation has not taken place.

Email vs. Push Notification Preference

Field staff will receive push notifications on their device if they:

  • Are using the QESTField mobile app, and

  • Are logged into the QESTField mobile app on their device, and

  • Have not disabled notifications for the QESTField mobile app via their device settings

If push notifications cannot be sent to an individual, QESTField Scheduler will send email notifications to the user instead if they have a valid email assigned to them in QESTLab.

If no email address exists for the user, and they cannot receive push notifications due to one of the above criteria not being met then no notifications will be sent to that user and a warning will be shown underneath the user's name in the timeline.

Reviewing Notification Logs

Records are kept of when notifications for work orders are sent and subsequently confirmed. These audit records can be exposed via a management report in QESTLab to allow review of if and when notifications have been confirmed. An example of a standard management report is shown below.

Most of the columns available in the audit records are self explanatory but there are a number whose purpose is less obvious, explained below. Note that not all of these columns are used in the standard management report but can easily be added.

Field

Description

Field

Description

Work details

WorkOrderID

Work order ID of the work order that the issuance and confirmation relates to

ProjectCode

Code of the work order's project when the notification was issued / confirmed.

ProjectName

Name of the work order's project when the notification was issued / confirmed.

FieldTechnician

The name of the assigned field technician when the notification was issued / confirmed.

WorkDate

Scheduled date of work when notification was issued/confirmed

StartTime

Scheduled start time (local) of work when notification was issued/confirmed

QestOwnerLabNo

Lab no. of the work order's laboratory. Required for lab filtering.

Issuing details

Issued

Set to 1 if a notification was issued. Note technicians can confirm work without being issued a notification which will create a confirmation record with the issued fields blank.

IssuedAsEmail

Set to 1 if notification was issued via email.

IssuedAsPushNotification

Set to 1 if notification was issued via a push notification for the QESTField app

IssuedBy

The name of the dispatcher who issued the notification in QESTField Scheduler

IssuedDateTimeLocal

The date/time local to the dispatcher when the notification was issued

IssuedDateTimeUTC

The UTC date/time when the work was issued

IssuedToEmail

The email address the notification was sent to if issued via email

Confirmation details

Confirmed

Set to 1 if notification was confirmed.

ConfirmedBy

The name of the user who confirmed the work in QESTField

ConfirmedDateTimeLocal

The date/time local to the user when the work was confirmed

ConfirmedDateTimeUTC

The UTC date/time when the work was confirmed

Other

IsSuperseded

Set to 1 if a more recent notification has been issued for the work order

Can be used to filter out notifications where work details were subsequently modified and the notification re-issued.

 

Management Report

If a management report for reviewing notifications is not available in a QEST Platform instance, please contact the Spectra QEST service desk for assistance in creating one.

 

 

 

 

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