Triaging observations

Observations in the top navigation is the inbox for everything your people have reported, and the badge on it is how many are waiting. Working through it is short work: each report has exactly two possible answers.

Seeing the inbox, closing a report and creating a job from one all need the Operator, Operations Manager, Brand Administrator or Tenant Admin role.

The inbox

The line under the heading tells you how many are waiting on a decision. Open, Closed and All switch what you’re looking at, and withdrawn reports are filed under Closed.

Each report shows its number, its status, the urgency if the reporter set one, what they wrote, who reported it and when, the customer if they linked one, where it was, and how many photos came with it. A report the reporter has since corrected is marked Edited.

Reading one

Click a report to open it. The report is exactly what they typed. Photos shows everything they attached, and clicking one opens it full size. Details down the side has the urgency, the customer and location if they linked them, the Address given if they typed one, Where it was reported with an Open in Google Maps link if they captured their position, their contact details, and Noticed during linking to the job if it was raised as a follow-up. Anything they left out reads Not given.

Once it’s been dealt with, an Outcome card is added: the reason it was closed, or the number of the job it became, with who closed it and when.

Answer one: make it a job

If it’s work you want done, click Create job from this. The ordinary job form opens with the customer, location and priority carried across and the description dropped into the notes, all of it editable. Fill in the rest as you would for any job. The job has to be in the same brand as the report.

When you save, three things happen at once. The job is created and linked to the report. The photos move from the report onto the job, so whoever turns up sees what the reporter saw. The report closes itself as Converted, with a link to the job number.

There’s nothing to close separately, and a report can only ever produce one job.

Note

Saving the job is what closes the report. Abandon the job form and the report stays open.

Answer two: close it

If it doesn’t need a job, because it was already handled, it isn’t yours to deal with, or it turned out to be nothing, click Close with no action. You’re asked for a Reason and it’s required, because six months later “closed” on its own tells nobody anything. The report then reads No action, with your reason on it.

Withdrawals

The person who reported something can take it back from the app while it’s still open, if they realise it was a mistake or someone else has handled it. It leaves your open list and reads Withdrawn. They can only withdraw their own, and only before you’ve acted.

Closed is closed

None of the three end states can be reopened. There’s no button, and no role has one. An observation records what somebody saw at a particular moment, and reviving a stale one causes more confusion than it settles. If the thing is still a problem, ask for a fresh report, or create the job yourself.

Nothing deletes an observation either, so the record of what was noticed and what you decided stays intact, and every change to it shows in the audit log.

Observations on a customer

When a report is linked to a customer, that customer’s record gains an Observations tab. Their history then covers what your people noticed on site as well as the work you did for them.

What’s next

• Observations: what an observation is and how it differs from a job
• Creating a job: the form that opens when you convert one
• Roles and permissions: giving triage to a custom role