On the User Admin page, you can see a new permission setting called “Mobile Create Jobs”. You can enable this option for any of your mobile workers.

Once this setting is enabled, a new option will appear on their phone. (Please make sure they are running the latest version of vWorkApp or this option will not appear.)

The new option is called “Create Job” and allows your workers to access any of your existing templates or customers when creating a job. They can also create a new customer if they need to.

At the moment, the new job is sent back to vWorkApp as soon as it has been created for a dispatcher to assign to someone. (If the phone is out of coverage, the new job will be sent to vWorkApp as soon as it comes back into coverage.)

We are currently exploring other options such as exposing only some templates to workers or allowing workers to assign jobs to themselves if no dispatcher is available.

Please let us know if you run into any problems and we’ll keep working on adding other new features as quickly as we can.

If you click on the reports button in vWorkApp, you will see a new tab called “Favorite Reports”. Or click here to jump straight to Favorite Reports. Once there, click the “Create Favorite” button to add a new favorite.

In this example, we have created a report that will show all of the Job Sheets for a specific worker for jobs that have not been started. Start by giving the report a name, in this case “Bob’s Jobs”.

Then choose which report the favorite should be based on, in this example we have selected “Job Sheets”. We then selected the filters for the worker (Bob) and the job status (Not Started).

Once this favorite is saved by clicking the “Create” button it becomes available to re-use anywhere you can select reports. It appears in the list of available reports on the main reports page as well as in the list of available reports on the “Scheduled Reports” page.

If you need a hand setting up your reports, please let us know.

One of the limitations was that they could only see their own jobs. We have now exapanded on that functionality in a couple of ways:

1.  You can now give them less permission. By choosing “Created Jobs Only” from the pull down menu on the Customer Portal Admin page, your customer will only be able to see jobs they have created through the customer portal.

2.  You can also give them more permission so that they can see every job created for them, whether they created it themselves or you created it on their behalf. Simply choose “All Jobs for Customer” from the permissions pull down menu.

3. We have also added the ability for you to create a login that is allowed to see jobs for multiple customers. This can be useful if you need to use a different customer name when dealing with different branches of a company.

4. By default, your customers will only have permission to see their jobs and make changes if they have not been started yet. If you want to give them the ability to create new jobs as well, you need to give them access to one or more templates. Simply select the template(s) you want them to use at the bottom of the page.

If you run into any problems with setting up logins for your customers, please let us know, we would be happy to help you get everything set up properly.

You may not be aware that connecting your vWorkApp account to your Salesforce account will allow you to automatically create jobs in vWorkApp based on your Salesforce tasks. If your Salesforce tasks are set up to repeat on certain days, then the new task will automatically appear in vWorkApp on the correct day.

Up until now, the sync has been one way. You could create jobs in vWorkApp from Salesforce, but Salesforce was never updated by vWorkApp. However, we now update Salesforce with 2 pieces of information from vWorkApp, they are:

• We now write the vWorkApp Job number into the notes field of the Salesforce task.

• We also close the Salesforce task once the job has been completed in vWorkApp.

If you want more information on how to setup Salesforce and vWorkApp to talk to each other, you can find our detailed setup guide here.

What are Job Alerts?

Job Alerts allow you to automatically send an email to someone in real time based on certain things happening to a job.

Why Would I Use Job Alerts?

There are lots of reasons you may want to use an alert. Here are just a few examples:

• I want to know if a worker declines a job so I can immediately assign it to someone else.
• The accounts department wants to know as soon as a job is finished so they can send an invoice to the customer straight away.
• The customer wants to know when the job has been started so they can expect the tech on site.
• I want to know if an apprentice is assigned a job they are not qualified to complete.
• I want to know when the call centre creates a new job so I can assign it to a worker right away.

All of these are now possible with alerts.

How do I Setup Job Alerts?

You can find the Alerts page under Reports. Simply click on Reports in the top menu bar and then select Alerts and click “Add Alert”.

The first thing you need to do is give your alert a name, this needs to be something descriptive so that you can find the alert if you need to delete it or make any changes to it. In this example, we have created an alert for the accounts department to be notified when a signature is received upon the completion of a job. The alert is called “Job Ready for Invoicing”.

The next thing you can do is to filter which jobs trigger this alert.  You can select jobs that use a certain template, are for a certain set of customers or are completed by a certain worker. In the example below, we have chosen to only create alerts for jobs done for 5 specific customers. You can make the filtering as simple or as complicated as you like. (If you leave all these filters blank, we will send alerts for all of your jobs.)

Next, we need to choose what action triggers the alert. In this example, the act of receiving a signature is what triggers the alert, as the workers only get a customer signature when they have signed off the work that has been done. Please note that certain actions may require you to specify further information. (eg: if you choose a step completion as a trigger, you will need to confirm which step you want to use)

Finally, you need to let us know who you would like us to email. In this example, the alert will be sent to accounts@visfleet.com and accounts@vworkapp.com

Can I Send SMS Alerts instead of Email?

We do offer this functionality, but it is not included in the base price of vWorkApp, as it incurs extra costs. If you are interested in sending SMS alerts, please let us know at support@vworkapp.com and we can enable this option on your account. SMS alerts costs 20 cents per message.

I think My Alerts are Wrong…

If you are having trouble setting up your alerts, please drop us an email, we are always happy to help set things up for you.

Scheduled reports are the same reports you have always been able to run in vWorkApp, but emailed out on a schedule that you define. You can choose who should receive which reports, when and how often. You can also filter by customer, worker, job status, template, etc…

How Can I Use Scheduled Reports?

You Can:

• Receive a daily report of your job activity every night.
• Send a CSV file to the accounts department on the 1st of every month to check the invoicing for the previous month.
• Send your regular customers a report every Friday confirming what is booked for the following week.
• Send your workers a report every Sunday night of all of their jobs for the next day.
• Email yourself every night with a report of jobs that are still in progress and have not been completed during the day.

How do I Setup a Scheduled Report?

Login to vWorkApp and go to the Reports tab. Under reports, you will notice a new tab called Scheduled Reports. Click “Add New Scheduled Report”.

The first thing you need to do is to select the report you want to run from the list of available reports. You also need to select whether the emailed report is a PDF or a CSV, then give the schedule a name so you can find it again if you need to edit it. In this case, we are sending a PDF of Job Sheets and we have called the schedule “Next Week’s Work”.

Next we need to select what time frame the report is for, when the first report will be sent and how often it should be sent after that. In this example, we are sending the next week’s work, the first report is being sent on Saturday the 16th of March at midnight and it will be sent every week thereafter. (Tip: the first date also sets the day of the week that future reports will be sent on.)

You also have the option of filtering the jobs that appear in the report. This can be useful if you are only interested in jobs based on a certain template, done by a certain worker or work done for a certain customer. (Tip: If you leave these fields blank, we will assume you want to include everything in the report.)

Finally, you need to tell us who we should email the report to. If you need to, you can click the “Add Recipient” button to add more than one person. In this case, we are mailing the report to sales@vworkapp.com and support@vworkapp.com

Once you are done, simply click the “Create” button and the report will be saved. You can click the scheduled report in the list if you need to edit it and change any of the details.

Help! I’m Confused

Not a problem. If you need a hand setting up scheduled reports, please drop us an email and we’d be happy to assist.

New Custom Field Types

If you want to use any of the new custom field functionality, like Numbers, Dates, Images, or mandatory custom fields, you MUST update your mobile phone app before adding these custom fields to your templates.

Workers Can Reschedule Jobs

As well as supporting the new custom fields, these updates also add the ability for mobile workers to change the scheduled start time or duration of a job without actually having to start it. If this is feature you want to use, you can enable it on the account settings admin page. (Again, workers must be running the latest version of the app for this to work.)

Auto Phone Setup via SMS

Finally, we have also turned on the ability to send SMS messages to your workers to ease the initial setup. The first SMS contains a link to download the app. The second SMS contains a link to login to the app once it has been installed. (This link only appears on the users admin page once a valid mobile number has been saved for them.)

Simply click on the user you want to message, ensure their mobile number is correct and click the “Send Now” link to send either a link to download the app or a link to login to the app.

Please Update Your Mobile Apps

Please note, that to take advantage of these new custom fields, you will need to update your mobile apps. Updates are available now from both Google Play and the iTunes App Store.

New Custom Field Types

You can now setup a custom field that has to be a number. This can be useful if you need to enter weights or quantities and don’t want to allow free text entry. This field allows the dispatcher or the worker in the field to enter numbers, a decimal place and a minus sign, but nothing else.

There is also a new custom field type that forces the entered data to use an ISO standard date and time format. Again, the worker or dispatcher has to enter a date and a time, and is not allowed to enter anything else. Both the website and the mobile devices are designed with custom date pickers to make this process as fast and painless as possible with no typing required.

The final additional custom field type is an image. This custom field allows dispatchers or workers to upload a photo to the job. This means dispatchers can send photos to workers showing them what needs to be done and workers can reply with photos proving that the job has been completed. (The image must be a JPG, GIF or PNG and must be less than 2MB in size.)

These new custom fields are additional to the existing custom fields: free text, and pick list.

New Custom Field Permissions

We have also added a new custom field permission called “required”. If you set the permission on a custom field to required, the worker in the field will not be able to complete the job until they have entered a value for this custom field.

This new permission is in addition to the existing permissions: optional, read only and hidden.

Please Update Your Mobile Apps

Please note, that to take advantage of these new custom fields, you will need to update your mobile apps. Updates are available now from both Google Play and the iTunes App Store.

Here’s how to upgrade:

1. Open vWorkApp on your Android phone and click on the menu button.
2. From the main menu choose “About”.
3. On the About page, choose “Check For Updates”, this will open Google Play.
4. In Google Play, please tick the box for “Allow Automatic Updating” and then select “Update”.

Now, that you have upgraded vWorkApp, here are just some of the new features:

• Workers are able to reschedule jobs without starting them. (This is an optional feature that needs to be enabled on the Account Settings Page.)
• This release now uploads the signature name as well as the date and time it was signed as free text, this data is accessible via the API.  You can find out more about out API on the vWorkApp API site.
• We have added support for a number of new custom field types, including: number, image, and date-time.
• We have also added support for mandatory custom fields that must be filled in before a job can be completed.

Please note, that this release will only work on Android 2.2 and above, Android 2.1 is no longer supported.

What Is It?

The vWorkApp customer portal is designed to make it easier for you to share information with your regular, repeat customers. It means you can create a vWorkApp login for these customers that gives them the ability to login and create jobs as well as see the status of all of their existing jobs.

How Do I Set It Up?

To set this up, go to the Customer Portal Page in the admin section of vWorkApp and click “Add Customer User”

The first thing you need to do is choose which customer this login is for, this will control which jobs they are allowed to see.  At the moment you need to choose one customer per login, but we will be expanding this so that you can eventually choose multiple customers. Simply start typing the customer name and select one of the options that appears. (If no option appears, you will need to create the customer first in the Customer Admin Page.)

Once this is done, add their name and email address and create a password for them to login to vWorkApp with.

Now select which template you want them to use when they are creating new jobs.  You can choose one of your existing templates or create a new one for them to use on the Template Admin Page. You can also give them multiple templates to choose from.

And finally you can choose whether or not you would like us to email your customer with all of their login details.  (If you select not to, you will need to give them their username and password directly.)

What Does My Customer See?

When your customer logs into vWorkApp, they will see a customized version of the jobs tab listing all of their jobs and allowing them to search through the list to see the current status of each job.

They will not be able to see hidden custom fields.

Can they Make Changes?

They will be able to make changes to step addresses and custom fields until you assign the job to a worker. After that, they can only view the information, but not edit it.

They can also delete unassigned jobs, but once jobs are assigned to a worker they cannot be deleted by the customer.

Help!

If you run into any problems setting this up, please let us know and we’d be happy to help.  Just drop us an email: support@vworkapp.com