Last Updated on December 28, 2022 by maximosecrets

The music is called Busy City from a group called TrackTribe.

Hello, and welcome back to Maximo Bite Size. A series of videos on the functional aspects of Maximo Manage. 

Title

Good afternoon, my name is Andrew Jeffery, and this is the second episode in the series on Asset Management and today I’ll be introducing you to Service Addresses.  

Learning Objectives

A service address can be both a postal address and a record that creates a point on a map and which helps to locate a location, asset, service request or work order.

We’ll take a first step by reviewing the Service Address application and then exploring how the service address is inherited on a location or asset. We’ll follow this by seeing how the service address is derived on a service request or work order to inform your technicians of where they will need to go to perform their work.

Finally, we will take a look at the Service Address options that you can find in the OrganizationsA structural element of a Maximo database which is used for data sharing and is often aligned to a legal entity of an organisation. More application. So, let’s get started.

Service Address

The Service Address application will be found in the Administration module. It is an Organization level object, and although there is a SiteA structural element of a Maximo database that is used for data separation. More field it would not normally be used. Entering a site would not stop a service address for one site from being used on a work order for another site, not unless you added a restriction to enforce this.

The fields on the left are the postal address and the latitude and longitude fields on the right position the service address on a map. You can use Y/X coordinates instead of latitude and longitude. This application will require a little bit of configuration to hide the address fields that are not relevant to where in the world you operate.

There appears to be three fields that could be used for a complete address, the Description, the Formatted Address and the Street Address.

• The Description field is used in the selection of the correct service address. Ideally it would be a concatenation of other address fields, city and the postal code, and a script can be created to achieve this, there is no standard function in Maximo for this.
• The Formatted Address field is populated when you select a map position in the Map tab, it is the nearest address to the map position.
• The Street Address field is the first line of a postal address.

All three fields are visible in the Address Information section in the Service Request and Work Order Tracking applications, but it is the Description field which is the most important.

Inheriting a Service Address

In both the Locations and Assets applications you’ll find a Service Address tab which looks similar to the main tab of the Service Address application, there is also a Map tab. On the main tab of the Locations and Assets application is a section called Address Information which shows the three fields discussed previously, the Description next to the Service Address identifier , the Formatted Address , and the Street Address .

The Details menu on the Service Address identifier allows you to select an address through the Select Value, navigate to the Service Address application, Create a New Service Address, or use the Open Map action to see the address’s location as a pin on a map. There is one other action Make Service Address Reusable which is used if you modify the address fields for a selected Service Address. I added ‘Test’ to the Street Address field which you can see in the Address Information screenshot in the lower left corner. Notice how the Service Address identifier has changed from AH001 to 1003. This Service Address currently only exists in the Location fields and will not be found in the Service Address application, not until you use the action Make Service Address Reusable. I’ll do that.

If you want to modify an existing service address because it is wrong, then do navigate to the Service Address application as otherwise you are only updating the fields on the Location or Asset record itself.

Service Addresses can either be added to each location or asset in the Address Information section on the main tab of those applications, or alternatively a service address can be derived from an ancestor location or in the case of an asset from its location.

Each Site in Maximo can have one Address System which is defined from the Manage Systems action in the Locations application, which you can see on the right. The Address System must be a hierarchy, but it need not be the system that is marked as the Primary System, although often it is. In the screenshot you can see that the system called PRIMARY in the BEDFORD site has been marked as the Address System. By default, there are no systems defined as an Address System.

Once defined, as you enter a service address for a location then all descendent locationsA physical place where assets exist and where work can be performed. More will use that service address unless they have a service address explicitly defined for it. This also works for assets; an asset’s service address can be derived from a parent or ancestor asset, or from the location to which it belongs.

I’ve added a Service Address to the NEEDHAM location in the Primary system and all its descendent locations and assets will now reference this service address.  

Maximo makes a search up the asset hierarchy, and then up the location hierarchy of the address system until a service address is found. In the example shown on the left, Asset 1006 will be found in Location Office 401 (OFF401) which following the primary hierarchy is a descendent of MOFLOOR4, OFFICE and then eventually NEEDHAM, all of those locations will show the same service address.

You need to bear in mind that this is a derived service address using a non-persistent field and the service address code will not be found on the location or asset record except on the record where it was explicitly defined, in this case NEEDHAM. A query on the service address code in the Locations application will not find the locations which are descendants of the location with this service address.

In the Service Requests application you’ll find a Service Address tab and a Map tab. The Address Information section is shown near the top of the main tab, as shown on the right. It has a layout the same as found on the Locations and Assets application. I’ve created a new Service Request and selected Service Address 1003 which we had made reusable earlier, it now exists in the SERVICEADDRESS table. The Address Information in the Work Order Tracking application is still found on the main tab, but lower down below the Job Details section.

The Details menu in the Service Address field does not give you options to create a new Service Address or make a Service Address reusable, it is for looking up Service Addresses that already exist. The Select Value shown in the bottom left corner was filtered for the test record, but it shows that the Description and Street Address fields are displayed, but not the Formatted Address. It is why I would recommend the Description field being the concatenation of some of the address fields, including the City and Zip/Postal Code, it would become the field most likely to be used on the Select Value. When working with millions of records the city and postal code do not always exist in the same address fields, they should of course, but experience has told me this is not always the case.

When a location or asset is referenced in the primary fields of a service request or work order, its service address will be copied. In the case where there is no explicitly defined service address, then the service address will be derived by looking up the asset and location hierarchies and once found will be copied. The address fields on the Service Request or Work Order are persistent to those records and can be modified without changing the address on the associated Service Address record. This also means that the Service Request and Work Order Tracking address fields can be used without creating any Service Address records, just enter the address of where the technician needs to go. This might be used by a utility company when dealing with the public.

Service Address Options

In the Organizations application there is an action called Service Address Options which opens a dialog box which you can see on your right. These settings are made for the current Organization.

The Address Master option determines whether the records are created in the Service Address application or whether an external system or GIS address system is master of this data, in which case the Service Address application will be read-only. 

The Service Address Format option allows the first line of the Street Address to be a structured address and you can only modify the Street Address field through the action Add/Modify Street Address. There is a second radio button for defining which of the three field formatting options will be used for the Street Address, for example, use the field order, House Number, Prefix, Street Name, Street Type, Suffix and Apartment. We will review this option more in the next slide.

The Coordinates option is used to define whether the map positioning is using Latitude/Longitude or X and Y. Latitude is considered Y, and longitude is X, but they are two different co-ordinate systems.

The toggle called ‘Create service addresses for child records of assets and locations?’ will stop a service address from being shared between multiple locations and assets.

The toggle called ‘Always prompt when a service address changes on work orders or service requests?’ will provide a warning when you change a location or asset on a work order or service request, and this action would change the service address that was previously saved to the record. 

The Add/Modify Street Address button on the Street Address field will normally produce the error message BMXAT0301E – The structured format cannot be used. To enable the use of this button then in the Service Address Options dialog in the Organizations application you need to set ‘Use the format that is defined in the Service Address application?’. 

The Service Address Format option is actually a radio button below this with three options for which House Number, Prefix, Street Name, Street Type, Suffix and Apartment is the default.

When the Add/Modify Street Address dialog opens, as seen on the right, you are presented with six fields to build a structure for the Street Address when populated. The Street Address will be read-only. In the example, the House Number (14) appears at the front followed by the Description Prefix (S – South), the Street Name – Acacia in our example, AVE (Avenue) for the Street Type, and then finally #2B is the Apartment/Unit/Suite reference. Pressing OK will generate the Street Address and close the dialog.

The Direction Prefix and Direction Suffix are the 8 compass points. The Street Types are abbreviations, AVE for Avenue.

The resulting Street Address is – 14 S Acacia AVE, #2B. You might find this a good place to pause the video to see how this has been derived.

Thank you for watching

I hope you have enjoyed this episode on Service Addresses and found it useful and thank you for listening. We would like to see you back in our next episode when we will return to the Assets module and take a look at Meters, Meter Groups and Condition Monitoring. 

Don’t forget to hit the Subscribe button, and you can use the Notifications button to receive an alert when the next episode has been published.

Until another time, Goodbye.