There are several aspects to be considered when moving your organization from a manual process to an electronic process: logistics, employee buy in, and needed devices. 


Logistics: Your team at minimum will need smartphones or internet enabled tablets to access the work order system. Each worker will need a ‘Maintenance Tech’ user account in the work order system set up. This Maintenance tech account will then be linked or ‘associated’ to the worker account. Note: when setting up these accounts be sure to add the workers email address to the worker account itself to enable the automatic email notice feature for workers getting email notification of work orders being assigned to them. 


To add the review and close option: Add a new status ‘Closed - Pending review’ to the Work Order Status by going to Manage>Work Orders Choices>Status, clicking add new and adding the status. Then go to System Defaults and Settings, Manage>Website>System Defaults and Settings and select setting #52 to Closed Pending Review. Then go into the user profiles of those system admins or order processors that will be reviewing these tech closed Work orders to add the submenu “Add Review and Close Work Orders to Menu.” 


Employee Buy In:    

Some districts have crossed this bridge long ago but many have not. Change is hard for an organization and if yours is mired in old practices, moving away from paper work orders and into the new digital age can be challenging. 


Apple Valley Unified did a great job building up demand for using devices and changing their process. They distributed devices to all staff that were interested - basically all the young team members. All workers had to finish their paperwork by the end of day. While the older team members had to sit in the office at the end of shift doing paperwork the younger team members had already done their ‘paperwork’ in the field and were able to leave early or at least had all their work already done. By the time we showed up for final training the older team members were primed for the new system as they saw how easy it was for the rest of the team to finish their work.


Devices:    

Some districts rely on smartphones for their workers, which will work. These districts only want one device issued to their guys therefore they use smartphones for their maintenance techs. However the older workers may complain these devices are hard to work on because the screen real estate is limited and so typing information into a work order on a phone can be challenging. Most districts give their staff inexpensive android tablets for their work order system tool of choice.