Last Updated on October 29, 2023 by maximosecrets

This article is the second part into a review of the Maximo Mobile Work Approvals application. The first part you can find here, it is where you should start – http://maximosecrets.com/2022/01/19/maximo-mobile-work-approvals-1/

This is part of a series of articles to discover the capability of the new Maximo Mobile applications. The system I am using has Maximo Mobile 8.3 installed, this is the November 2021 release, in System Information it indicates IBM Maximo Application Framework 8.6.0.0 Build 20211012-1522 DB Build V7600-18. I am initially using a desktop browser; at some later date I will probably look to write some articles from a mobile phone or tablet perspective. 

The Maximo Mobile applications are currently found in the Work Order module and Role Based Applications sub-module. 

The Work Approvals mobile application was first released as part of Maximo Mobile 8.3, it is a very new application, and it does not yet cover the functional footprint of the Work Supervision Work Center, I discuss this briefly at the end of this article.

We will start this second part at the two big buttons that you see at the bottom of the Review a work order page, Attachments and Follow-up Work.

Attachments

I’m returning to the two big buttons at the bottom of the View Work Order page. I am using work order 42001, with work type PM, I know I have already attached a document and a web page to this work order.

The button shows 2 existing attachments. Note. It doesn’t always show this, not when you have first launched the Work Approval application, after this it seems to be OK.

The View Attachments page shows the two attachments, the top one being the ZNAPZ logo (a document attachment), the bottom one being a link to a web page, in this case Maximo Secrets, www.maximosecrets.com.

Clicking the top attachment will open the file. Clicking the bottom attachment will open the web page in a new browser tab.

The + button at the top right is a little discreet for buttons displayed elsewhere in the Work Approval mobile application.

Using the + button opens the native file browser for an Apple Macbook at the Desktop folder. I picked a Microsoft Word document, an article I had written on the 12 Steps to Asset Management Maturity, and then used the Upload button.

A new document link is created. The > button on the right-hand side downloads the document. When returning to the work order it now shows as having 3 attachments.

Follow-up Work

In the Work Order Tracking application for work order 42001 I have related both a Service Request (1002) and a Work Order (1465). The Follow-up work button now shows there are 2 related records.

When you click the button the two records are displayed, however, it does not distinguish between tickets and work orders as two separate panes, which is what we would expect. It shows the relationship type on the right-hand side, but there is no display of the class of ticket or work order. These records are for viewing only, you cannot use them to navigate.

At the top right is a button to Create follow-up work, which is where we will go next.

The Create follow-up work order dialog allows you to:

• Enter a Description, it defaults from the description of the originating record, I just added Rework to the end of “Inspection and Certification”.
• Enter a Long description, I entered “This is a test of entering a long description”.
• Enter a Priority, it defaulted to the priority of the originating work order, I changed it from 3 to 2.
• Enter a Scheduled start and Scheduled finish, there is currently no time element lookup, and it uses am/pm rather than a 24-hour clock. 
• Enter an Estimated duration, I entered 4 hours. 

Further down the screen you can use the lookup to change the Work type, I changed it from PM to CM. The Asset and location are displayed, the asset number and location identifier instead of their descriptions, these are not modifiable. I am not entirely certain why you would not be able to change the asset and location as the new follow-up work order would be at Waiting to be Approved (WAPPR) status and editing is allowed at this state.

Edit Work Order

In this section we will explore modifying the work order. The work order we will modify is 1465 with a work type of PM. We saw this work order in the earlier part of this article, it was the one where there was an asset and location with meters and we entered a downtime record.

Change Status

If you click the status button, you can modify it, the Approve button will change status in a single click.

The Change Status dialog opens in the left-hand pane with the statuses that you might modify the work order to. Cancelled is not shown because there are actuals, the work order had been previously approved. In this dialog you can enter a change status memo.

To save and to close the change status dialog you use the blue tick button.

The status is changed to Waiting on material (WMATL).

We will now edit the work order using the pencil icon next to the Priority, which although it looks like a button, is not modifiable here.

The edit work order page is similar to creating a follow-up work order, which we saw earlier. You can modify the description, the long description, scheduled start and finish dates, estimated duration, and work type. The asset and location are also shown but they cannot be modified on this record. This is because in the Organization’s application – Work Order Options – Edit Rules, changing of the asset or location is not allowed. In another test, I did change this and currently you only have the option to enter a location or asset, there is no lookup (yet). There is a camera button next to the asset, which must only be enabled for a tablet or mobile.

The long description opens and displays rich text formatting. I entered the last line using the toolbar which currently is missing the buttons but the hover over text allowed me to add some text that was underlined, and some text with a bigger font size that had both text and background colouring.

Start Work

Staying with work order 1465 we will now use the Start work button.

The first thing I have had to do is to add a GL account to the work order as I received the error message “BMXAA2530E – Not a valid labor transaction GL account ????-???-300. Either the required components are not filled or the component values are not valid.”. 

The location and asset did not have a GL account and the GL defaulting rules would not have derived a full GL account. The Start work button must be creating a labor transaction to give this error message. Normally on a production system if you have GL validation turned-on then you would have set up GL defaulting rules, so that you would not (or rarely) get this message.

Having fixed the data using the Work Order Tracking application and using the Start Work button again, now there are button options to Pause work or Stop work. Time for a coffee break.

A dialog appears after pressing the Pause Work button. If you look closely, the Start Date/Time is after the Finish Date/Time which is likely to create an error if we used the Send button, the duration is actually correct at 8 minutes. It looks as if the Start Date/Time is using the server clock and the End Date/Time is using the time from the client’s browser. The server I am using is in the Netherlands (NL) and I am in England (GB), NL is one hour ahead of GB. Let’s see if I can change that start time by using the Edit labor button.

The Edit labor dialog allows you to change all the fields including the Labor. I changed the time type from “Actual work time” to “Waiting for materials”. I also changed the Start time from 4:12 back to 3:12 and as I was modifying the Start time, the End time was reset to time now and the Hours was recalculated to 17 minutes.

When complete with the changes you submit by using the blue tick button.

An additional labor transaction now appears in the Labor section of the work order.

It is very tempting to now use the Complete work button, but I’ll Start Work again have another short break and this time use the Stop work button to see if there are any differences.

Back to work again and I can report there were no differences, I received another dialog with Edit labor and Send options. I can also confirm that I did receive an error message when trying to submit the time record with the message indicating that the Start time cannot be before the End time. I had to use the Edit labor button to change the Start time.

I thought at first that the latest actual labor transaction had not been created, then I opened Mike Wilson and both time records could be found.

Now I can use the blue button, Complete work.

The work order is no longer shown it is no longer in the query – Work orders to review. To find it you need to change the query to Completed work orders.

As the work order is now complete, I am not sure of the merit of showing that it is Overdue, in red text.

Also, when you use the View button you can review the work order, it looks the same as it did before. Rather than showing the Scheduled Start and Finish dates, it would be better to show the Actual Start and Finish dates, it is more relevant.

Multiple Assets and Locations

Having now followed what I think are all the paths through the Mobile Work Approval application, I am in search of other features which the Work Supervision Work Center supports, to see if it is supported in this new application. One such area is support for the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table.

The Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table is shown below the Asset and location section and above the two large buttons for Attachments and Follow-up work, it is only shown if there are records. I created three records in the Work Order Tracking application for location OFF401, the Asset 12300 and the third was for Configuration Item DCMJ21. I do not believe configuration items will be supported yet, or possibly for a while, hence why the third record does not show any values.

The top record for location OFF401 showed the Meter Readings button when you opened the record from the right-hand side button. For the middle and bottom records there was no button. Perhaps Change Asset Status or Downtime Reporting in this table window is not supported yet. The middle record had an Inspection Form and there was no indication of this.

For all three records you could Mark Progress using the Mark complete button. This positioned an icon next to the LocationA physical place where assets exist and where work can be performed. More or Asset symbol, a green circle with a green tick.

Tasks

If the work order has tasks, a button appears below the Details section showing the number of incomplete tasks, 2 in this case.

Using the Tasks button, a dialog opens showing the tasks and their descriptions. A details button to the right will show:

• The Task’s long description – I had called it Task long description
• Inspection Form description – Bridge Inspection Report is the description of inspection form 1011 (not shown).
• Inspection Result – 1046. The button to the left will launch the Mobile Inspection application for inspection 1046, an occurrence of inspection form 1011.

Each task has a button for marking the task complete. When you use this, you get a green tick in a green circle icon between the task number and the task’s description. It changes the task’s status to COMP. I marked task 20 as complete and the tasks button in the details area of the work order now showed 1 instead of 2.

Get Materials and Tools

When a user first logs in to the Maximo Mobile Work Approval application there may be a blue banner at the top of the application titled Get materials & tools.

This is a list of the planned materials and tools for which the user is the assigned labor (ASSIGNMENT.LABORCODE) and the supervisor of the work order. The description in the middle is the work order description, but the work order number is not shown (currently). The storeroom on the bottom material line does have the item XMP-9500, but the work plan material says that it is being reserved from the CENTRAL storeroom and not the Abu Qir Project Store.

The number on the right-hand side is the quantity required. The checkbox beside it, doesn’t create an actual material transaction, so I am not entirely sure of its purpose.

At the top there is another query for PMs due this week. The message I received was that there were “No planned materials or tools.”

Comparing with Work Supervision Work Center

The v8.3 version of the Work Approval Mobile application is a first release, and it does fall short of the equivalent Work Supervision Work Center, but then the Work Center had several enhancements across various releases, it was not all delivered in one release.

There is no button to review the Service Requests (SR) and change their status, assign an owner or create a follow-up work order from the SR. Nor is there the ability yet to create a new work order, only a follow-up work order.

There were several features added to the Work Supervision Work Center in 7.6.1.2 which do not appear to be supported yet. For example:

• Make work order assignments
• Support for crews
• Recording overtime hours
• Support for work order classifications and specifications

I’ll look forward to the next Maximo Mobile release to see what differences have been made.