Work orders

A work order is a named piece of work assigned to one or more people. It comes in three types:

• General Work — a standalone task for the team, optionally with a field-feature checklist to tick off.
• Spot Fix — a group of trouble spots to resolve, assigned as one job.
• Spot Search — a row-by-row sweep of chosen blocks hunting one specific trouble-spot type.

See Work order types for what each looks like and how to choose between them.

When to use a work order

Reporting and completing individual trouble spots (see Reporting and Completing) covers the simple case: someone finds a thing, someone fixes it. Reach for a work order when you need to:

• Assign work to specific people — one or more users in your management group.
• Set a start date and deadline — so everyone knows when the work opens and when it needs to be done by.
• Track progress — see at a glance how much of the job is done.
• Give the field a focused job — a batch of spots to fix, blocks to sweep, or a checklist to work through, instead of a vague instruction.

A Spot Fix doesn't change what a trouble spot is — it's a container that groups spots together and gives the team a shared view of the work.

Creating work orders

Work orders are created in the portal, from the WORK section of the left nav. The section has one page per type — General, Spot Search, and Spot Fix — and the page you're on decides the type you create: the + button at the top of each page opens that type's create wizard directly. There is no type picker. See Creating a work order.

The lifecycle

1. Create — a manager creates the work order from its type's page in the portal, picks its contents (spots, blocks, or an optional feature checklist), and assigns people.
2. Work — assigned users see the work order on the app's Work tab once its start date arrives. Tapping the card starts a work session and jumps to the map. See Working a work order.
3. Progress — progress counts type-specific units: features for General Work, spots for a Spot Fix, rows for a Spot Search. Both the mobile card and the portal row show a progress bar alongside a completed / total count.
4. Done — a work order completes itself when its last unit lands: the last feature checked, the last spot resolved, or the last row swept. Completion is attributed to the person who finished it, and un-doing a unit reverts the order to in progress. There is also an explicit Mark complete / Reopen action in the portal — in the detail page's header and in each row's ⋮ menu — which is how a General order with no checklist gets closed. Field users can also finish an order from the app with a press-and-hold. Reopening is portal-only.
5. Archive or delete — archiving moves a work order under the Archived filter and out of the everyday view; it can be restored, and archiving or restoring from the list shows an Undo toast for about five seconds. Deletion is permanent, but the trouble spots or features on the work order are never deleted — only the container is.

Finding a work order: the status filter

Each of the three WORK pages has a status filter above its table, with a live count for each option:

• All — every work order of that type, including archived.
• Active — the default. Work orders that aren't complete or archived. This is the day-to-day view.
• Overdue — active work orders whose deadline has already passed.
• Complete — finished work orders (but not yet archived).
• Archived — work orders you've tidied away. They can be restored from here.

A work order moves between these views on its own as work lands and as you archive — there's nothing to set by hand. Your filter choice is remembered, separately for each type's page.

Portal vs mobile

• Portal is where work orders are created, assigned, edited, archived, and deleted, and where managers watch progress across the whole team. It's also where completed work lives, for review or reopening.
• Mobile (the Archer app) is where field users do the work. The Work tab (bottom nav: List · Maps · Work) shows only open work assigned to you whose start date has arrived — not all of the organisation's work orders. Tapping a card starts (or resumes) working and jumps to the map; the card's ⓘ button opens its details without starting.

Work orders cannot be created on mobile.

Pages in this section

• Work order types — the three kinds and how to choose
• Creating a work order — portal
• Assigning and tracking a work order — portal
• Working a work order — mobile
• Turning a Spot Search into a Spot Fix — portal