Set up WorkWing for the first time

Work through these steps in order and you’ll finish with a job on an engineer’s phone. Each step links to the page with the detail, so you can go as deep as you need and come back.

You’ll need the Tenant Admin role, which you hold already if you signed up. The Getting started bar on the dashboard tracks most of these steps and ticks them off as you go.

1. Check your organisation details

Open Settings > Organisation profile. Check the organisation name, then set the Default country, which decides the country new addresses start with and whether forms say postcode or ZIP.

Look hard at the Workspace URL while you’re there. It’s the address everyone signs in at, and engineers type it into the mobile app. You can change it for 24 hours after signing up. After that it’s fixed, and changing it means contacting support. See Organisation profile.

2. Decide whether you need more than one brand

Your organisation starts with one brand named after your company, and most businesses never need another. Add a second when you trade under a different name, or a part of the business needs its own job numbering, job types and customer emails. If the only difference is who does the work, use teams instead. The Free plan has one brand; the paid plans allow more.

Whatever you decide, set up the brand you have: its appearance, its terminology if your team says “engineer” or “technician” rather than “resource”, and the job numbering format under Job settings. Brands explains what belongs to a brand and what’s shared.

3. Set your business hours

Open Settings, pick the brand in the Scope selector, and click Business hours. They shade the dispatch timeline and, if you want, stop SLA clocks overnight. It’s optional, but do it before you set SLA targets on job types. See Business hours.

4. Build your job types

A job type is a preset for a kind of work: the form your office fills in, the form your engineer fills in on site, how long it usually takes and what has to be captured before it can be completed. Every brand starts with one called General Job.

Start with the two or three kinds of work you do most. Rename General Job into the first of them, then create the rest under Settings > Job types with the brand selected. See Creating a job type and The form builder.

5. Decide how people sign in

Open Settings > Authentication and check the sign-in methods. Leave Email code on if your engineers will use the mobile app. An invited engineer accepts with a code sent to their inbox, and may never set a password. On the Basic plan and above you can set up single sign-on here, if your staff already sign in through Microsoft, Google or Okta.

Then open Settings > Security. Decide whether to require two-factor authentication for everyone, and whether field workers must share their location while working. Turn either on before you invite people, not after, so nobody gets caught out at their next sign-in. See Security policies.

6. Invite your team

Open Settings > Team Members and click Invite colleague for each person. Pick the role that matches what they do: Operator for dispatchers, Operations manager for whoever runs the work and reads the reports, Brand administrator for whoever looks after the brand’s setup, and Field worker for engineers. Roles and permissions has the full comparison.

A field worker becomes a resource as soon as they accept, ready to be assigned work. If you go out on jobs yourself, give yourself a resource record from Resources > Create Resource. Onboard your first field engineer walks through getting one person from invitation to working a job on their phone.

Contractors whose logins you don’t own go through Invite external worker instead. See External workers.

Once your engineers exist, set their working hours and, on the Basic plan and above, put them into teams and record their skills.

7. Add a customer

Open Customers and click Create Customer. A name and a type are all it needs. Add the address and WorkWing turns it into the customer’s first location, which is what puts the job on the dispatch map.

Customers only get emails and texts when Email Opt-in or SMS Opt-in is ticked on their record. See Adding a customer.

8. Create, assign and schedule a job

Click Create Job, pick a job type, then the customer and location. Set a start time and click Add resource to put an engineer on it. Save it and the engineer’s phone tells them. Your first job goes through the form field by field.

From here on, most planning happens on the dispatch console, where you drag jobs onto engineers on a timeline and a map.

9. Decide what your customers hear

Your customers hear from you by email as a job moves along, and by text when an engineer sets off. Read the wording under Email templates, and switch on the en-route text under Customer notifications if you want it. Texts are on the Basic plan and above.

Before you go live

Run complete jobs with your own team before real customers are involved, then work through the go-live checklist.