About work order approval
The work order approval (WOA) functionality uses the estimated cost value of a report to generate approval emails that allow authorised users to approve the corresponding maintenance work. The WOA process is activated whenever an estimated cost inside a report is greater than the value of the associated approval rule (see below for details). E-mails are automatically sent to the approving officers. By using recognised keywords in their replies, approving officers trigger an automatic update of the work order approval status of these reports.
WOA is disabled by default and must be enabled for the application.
WOA is not currently available on an Android device. However, the approval status of a report can be seen in the report details of a Saved or Completed report. Statuses get updated when the reports are updated, if applicable.
Approval rules
Approval rules are set in the Work Order Approval Management dialog. In this dialog, users can add new rules, or edit / cancel existing rules.
Note: Only System Administrators and Administrators can manage rules for work order approvals.
Each rule applies to one InfoAsset Manager network object only and contains a threshold value, the users to notify, and the number of required approvals. This last parameter defines the number of replies that need to be received to approve the maintenance work.
Refer to the Authorisation dialog topic for more details.
If a saved or completed report related to the same network object as the rule has an estimated cost that is greater than the rule threshold, InfoAsset Mobile automatically notifies the users specified in the rule by e-mail.
Automatic e-mail notification
This notification occurs when the report is uploaded onto the InfoAsset Mobile server. Approving officers must reply via e-mail using one of the keywords specified in the Keywords entry of the Email Settings section of the Email and Approval tab of the Server Management dialog (for example, "yes" or "ok" to approve, "no" to reject, or "wait" to put on hold). These keywords can be customised by an Administrator or a System Administrator.
These valid response keywords, when included in the reply, are processed by InfoAsset Mobile and the approval status of the corresponding report automatically updated:
- If only one approval is required for a certain rule and the approving officer replies to the e-mail by using one of the recognised keywords to approve the work maintenance (for example, "yes"), then the work order status of the report changes from Pending to Approved.
- If two approving officers have been specified for a given rule and one has not replied to the notification e-mail yet but the other has approved the work (for example, "yes" in reply), the work order status of the corresponding report remains as Pending.
Additional report information can be added to notification e-mails by setting to True, in the form that the report is based on, the Authorization property of the fields you want included in the e-mails.
Tip: The Authorization property applies only to text-based items/ fields.
Refer to the Authorization section of the Property Box topic for further information.
Work order approval status update
The work approval status of a report can be seen in the Work Order Approval column of the Reports tab. Statuses get updated there when the schedule is downloaded or reports updated.
Work orders awaiting approval
It is easy to identify at a glance all the work orders awaiting approval in the Work Orders Awaiting Approval dialog, accessible from the Reports tab. In this dialog, users can see if notification e-mails have been sent and if replies have been received. They can also see whether each individual approving officer has approved or rejected a particular work order.
