Last Updated on January 17, 2024 by maximosecrets
Contents
Technician is a Maximo Mobile application which will also be found on the desktop in the Work Orders module and Role Based Applications. There may be some differences between the mobile application and the role-based application, and I aim to uncover those differences. Maximo Mobile aims to be an offline solution, the Role Based Application performs the same functions, but only works online from a browser.
This is the first article on the Role-Based Application – Technician and the screenshots have been taken with an iPad in landscape mode. The article will cover more details than the Maximo Mobile article for Technician which will be focused on an end-user, for example, in the last article in this series I will also review the Object Structures and Queries that support the applications.
The Technician application was the first Maximo Mobile application to be released and I reviewed it in January 2022 following the MAS 8.6 release. It has been enhanced consistently over the last two years so there is a lot to catch up on. The last time the Technician application required three articles, and I didn’t write about the Create Work Order function which is where I will start with this set of articles, I also now have mapping enabled. I expect there to be four or five articles for the Technician application, this is the first.
To show as many features as I can discover I have enabled a few System Properties and I’ll discuss those at the appropriate point. The biggest hurdle for me remains finding out what features exist, and what hasn’t been added to the application yet, so apologies if I miss something out. I am now much more used to looking at the configuration code to find out what I might expect to find, then conjuring the data to see if anything is revealed.
The environment I am using is MAS 8.11.0, Maximo Manage 8.7.2 and Maximo Mobile 8.11.0.
Create Work Order
From the Navigator, the plus button at the top will allow you to create a work order.
The Create Work Order screen will create a work request, a work order at waiting to be approved (WAPPR) state. The first two fields allow you to enter a short and long description.
Earlier this week an integrated fridge/freezer which we have had for 23 years decided to pack-up, so I’ll make a work order with the title – Replace fridge/freezer. The long description has a button which must be where you enter the details.
The Long Description has a rich-text formatting toolbar and I have highlighted some text in red and then used background highlighting for other text on the second line – After 23 years the fridge/freezer decided to permanently defrost. A replacement was ordered from John Lewis who will install and takeaway the old unit. Now I am worried, will it fit, will they install or find a reason not to, will the doors be flush afterwards. Result is a few sleepless nights.
I would recommend trying the rich-text formatting toolbar first on a desktop as there are tool tips on the buttons which I don’t think you can activate on a touch screen device. You might see that I didn’t work out how to turn-off the background highlighting after the words John Lewis, I just changed the background colour. I have since found out that you need to use the button with a red diagonal line to turn off coloured text or highlighted text.
When you use the chevron (<) button you are presented with a message Save or discard changes? You should use the Save button if you don’t want to lose what you have written in the long description. The first time I thought the message was referring to saving the work order, so I lost what I had written in the long description.
Further down are fields for the work order priority, I entered 9 which is high, being without a fridge/freezer over Christmas and New Year is certainly not ideal.
The next two fields are the Scheduled Start and Scheduled Finish, personally I would much prefer these to be a Target Start and Target Finish and leave the schedule dates to be decided by the Scheduling team. I have raised an IBM Idea (RFE) to give a choice of whether to use Target or Schedule dates. You can see the Enhancement Ideas I’ve raised towards the bottom of this article.
I entered the Schedule Start as of next Wednesday 20th December which is when the new fridge/freezer is due to be delivered. I immediately ran into an error when moving from the Schedule Start Time to the Schedule Finish Date because the mobile application defaulted today’s date to the Scheduled Finish and then gave the error message ‘The start date must be before the finish date’.
The only way to overcome this error is to clear the Scheduled Start Date by using the (X) button and setting the Scheduled Finish Date before going back to the Scheduled Start Date. The default for the Scheduled Finish Date should come from the Scheduled Start Date, similarly for the time element. I’ve created a case for this with IBM Support.
For the Estimated Duration I entered 3:00 hours. At the bottom of the screenshot is the Work Type.
The Work Type field has a lookup which appears from the left-hand side, the panel is called a sliding drawer. The Work Type has a search facility, but with typically a small number of records the user will probably scroll to find the work type before using the button on the right. I chose CM – Corrective Maintenance.
In the Asset and Locations section I missed out the asset and used the button on the right and selected Search, the other option was Scan.
The Location Search gives a list of locationsA physical place where assets exist and where work can be performed. More with their descriptions. In the Service Request role-based application, the choice for select locations is more comprehensive and hopefully this will be added to the Technician application in due course, but I did raise an IBM Idea for this as well.
All you can do is use a word search and after I entered ‘Filleigh’ you use the button on the right to activate the filter.
Two records were found, one for my home and one for St Pauls church which is next door. The (X) button would clear the filter. But I will select the location FILLEIGH.
After you have completed the Create work order form you use the Save button on the top right of the screen.
This creates the work order, 1285 in my case, at status WAPPR (Waiting on approval). The Reported By is the person logged in, WILSON in my case, and the Reported Date is date/time now.
In my case the location FILLEIGH has the Service AddressA Service Address is a postal address and/or a record that positions a point on a map. More 1005, but this is not copied onto the work order as it would be on the desktop Work Order Tracking application with the WOSERVICEADDRESS fields populated from the equivalent SERVICEADDRESS fields. I’ve raised an IBM Support case about this.
You can now modify the work order created, and we’ll explore this screen in the next section of this article. The work order will be found as part of the query – Work created by me.
Review Work Order Created
You can find the work order you created by using the My Schedule button from the blue Navigator screen and choosing the query – Work created by me. I made a query by the work order number 1285, but you could have used some of the text from the description you gave – fridge or freezer in my case. We’ll explore the other search, filtering, and sort buttons in another article.
The fields displayed are as follows:
Top section – Description, Work Type and Work Order Number and on the right the Status and Priority. The Status can be changed from the button, but I will also show that in another article.
Middle section – The number of days before the Scheduled Start. Below this the Asset Number with Asset Description below and Location Description below this.
Bottom section – Buttons – The buttons shown will depend on context, the one shown is the Work Log, but Safety Plan, Materials and Tools, MeterA Meter is an identifier for recording meter readings, measurements and observations on assets or locations. More Readings, and the Map button are all possible. For a newly created work order it is likely to only be the Work Log that is shown.
Next to the Status and Priority is a button (>) which allows you to review the Work Details.
We saw the top of the Work Order Details screen in the screenshot before the last one. Below the description and long description is a set of buttons which are Materials and Tools, Work Log, Set GPS Location and Report Work. Again, there could be other buttons depending on context, for example if the work order had now had a Job Plan applied there might be a Tasks button.
The Asset and Location section shows the Asset Number, Asset Description and Location Description with an image to the right. As I did not reference an asset this all looks rather bear.
You can create Attachments, you might want to take some photos for the newly created work order, however, it is unlikely you would be creating a Follow-up work order yet.
At the bottom is a panel of fields displaying the Reported Date, who reported this work order and their contact telephone number.
Next to the Status and Priority fields is a button which navigates to the Edit Work Order screen. This should look familiar because it is the same layout as the New Work Order screen.
It has fields for the Description, and you can view the text and navigate to change the Long Description with the same rich-text formatting as was available for the New Work Order. The Priority is displayed, with the Scheduled Start Date/Time and Scheduled Finish Date/Time displayed after this.
At the bottom of the Edit Work Order screen is the Estimated Duration, the Work Type and finally the Asset or Location. There is a Save button at the top right.
The first button is Materials and Tools. This shows the work plan materials and tools, but it doesn’t allow you to create records. The technician who creates a new work order may be able to identify a part that is needed, but currently they can only create a work log record identifying those details.
The second button is the Work Log. For new work orders there won’t be an existing work log, but you can create a new log note record. I entered – Don’t forget you need to be at home on Wednesday.
There are two buttons, the top one expands to allow you to enter a long description and select the log note type. The lower arrow-head button submits the log note that you have entered as a summary.
Expanding the log note shows a screen where you can enter the long description of the log note, there is a rich-text formatting toolbar. In two places I’ve used bold and a font colour, and in another I’ve highlighted some text. Above the toolbar are three options:
- Edit – with buttons for Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy
- Insert – with buttons for Link, Image, Media
- Format – with buttons for Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough, Superscript, Subscript, Code, Blocks (headings), Align (left, center, right, justify), Clear Formatting, Left-to-right, Right-to-left.
I did use the Insert – Link option to enter a link to my Maximo Secrets website.
There is a radio button for you to select the Work Log Type, the default is Client Note. Right at the bottom is a checkbox called Visibility which would allow the log note to be visible to any originating Service Request or other Ticket.
After you have used the blue arrow-head button the log note summary appears at the top of the Work Log panel on the left-hand side with the name of the submitter and above this the date the work log record was created. Preceding the date is some text ‘Today’, but it might also say something like ‘4 days ago’.
The Work Log panel is designed to represent a chat log. The chevron button to the right of each log note record expands so that you can see the long description, it is read-only and cannot be modified.
The third button sets the GPS Location on the current work order, when you use this the green background message – Device location saved – is displayed. A map button will also be activated on the right of the long description, and this will show a map with the position of the work order, which if you do this immediately will be at the same point as the green circle identifying your current GPS location.
After activating, if you review the work order in the Work Order Tracking application, you’ll find that the Latitude/Longitude fields have been set, and this would show the position of the work order on the Map tab if maps have been set-up on your Maximo environment.
The fourth button opens the Report Work screen, which would not be used for a new work order that hasn’t yet been approved. You can enter a Failure Report using the edit button in the top right, I’ll review this in much more detail in another Technician article.
Attachments
At the bottom of the Review Work Order screen there is a button that opens the Attachments screen with the ability to create new attachments using the Photo Library, by Taking a Photo or Video, or by Choosing a File on your device. This last one might be used if you had filled out a spreadsheet that is used in a special type of inspection, for example.
I used the second option – Take Photo or Video – and the devices camera opened, and I took a photo of my notebook with some topics for forthcoming Maximo Secrets articles.
There are two options, to Retake the photo or Use Photo, I used the photo taken.
You will need to optionally supply a File Name and a Description, and I entered Notebook for the File and a Description of Notebook image of upcoming role-based application articles. You save with the blue button at the top of the left-hand side panel. A blue background information message – Attachment Added – will be displayed.
The Description and File Name that you provided will now be displayed with a thumbnail of the image on the right-hand side. You can click the thumbnail to expand the image to full size. With buttons to Zoom In, Zoom Out, and Reset, which you would use after you had been zooming in and moving the image to view the detail.
If you use the Photo Library option, the photos are saved to your device. If you use the option, Take Photo or Video then the photos are only downloaded to Maximo, they are not saved on your device. The Photo Library option allows you to select multiple photos, but it opens the File Name and Description dialog which means that it can only save one attachment at a time. It would be better to allow multiple photos to be saved as attachments and then allow someone to modify the File Name and Description from the Attachments screen. I’ve raised an IBM Idea for this.
Enhancement Ideas
While writing this article I came up with a few enhancement suggestions for the application and I have raised the following IBM Ideas:
Option to choose Target or Schedule dates when creating a work order.
When you create a new work order the requester should be able to provide dates when they think the work order should be targeted this could be many months ahead, and beyond any scheduling period. Some Maximo sites would not want the Schedule dates to be entered with a new work order as this gives the impression that the work order has been scheduled by the planners/schedulers, which is not the case. There should be a System Property to say whether the two dates used when creating a new work order should be the Target Start/Finish or the Schedule Start/Finish.
https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/MASMOBILE-I-466
Selection of Asset and Location should be the same as for Service Requests (RBA)
When creating a new work order you should have the same capability to select a location or asset as is found on the Service Requests application. The Select Values have more fields, there is a drilldown capability with navigation back up the location hierarchy (location tree), you can also select from the map. The two applications should work identically in this respect instead of being inconsistent.
https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/MASMOBILE-I-468
Select multiple photos from Photo Library
When you have taken several photos which you wish to include on a new work order, then as you review the work order and navigate to the attachments you can select multiple photos using the Photo Library option, but the File Name and Description dialog then opens which only allows one photo to be saved as an attachment. It would be better to not provide the filename, description dialog when multiple photos or videos have been selected, but then to be able to rename the file or provide a description from an option on the Attachments list where the thumbnail is shown.
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