Crew Member Mobile Enhancements

FieldAware has enhanced the way crews receive jobs on their mobile devices. Now, all crew members get a notification of a job on their mobiles, plus they can manage their own time and tasks from their own mobile device. The feature consists of the following three sections.

Read-Only on All Devices
Enable a job to be sent to all crew members of a job. The Job Lead has full control of the job details, including job description, job custom fields, labor, etc. The Job Lead is selected on the WebApp when the job is created. All the crew members will receive a Read-Only version of the job on their devices. Read-only is required in order to activate crew member job time tracking and task assignment.

Activating Read-Only on All Crew Devices
Activating a Read-Only crew member distribution is enabled by FieldAware Account Mangement. Once the feature is activated AND all mobiles are updated to the latest version (1.26+), then jobs will display on all crew member devices.

Notes:

After Read-Only has been activated for crew members, there is an additional option to allow each crew member to control their own time on a job. Once this setting is enabled in Roles & Rights for the role or on the individual user, each crew member would be responsible for starting and stopping their own time on a job. The Job Lead loses access to control that crew member’s time; however, any WebApp user could still change each crew member's job status.

This feature works the same as job state time events did in the previous version, with one exception: it is now accessible to any/all crew members and not limited to only the Job Lead. If a crew member can manage their own time, then they will have access to adjust the timestamps (same rule as today), but they will not have access to chargeable hours. Chargeable hours are a billing function and left for the Job Lead or back office to complete.

Activating Crew-Time
This feature is enabled through Roles & Rights only after Read-Only has been activated in the Admin tool for the business. As soon as all mobiles are on the latest version, all devices will start getting crew jobs. There is no business toggle to activate across the board. The Role & Right called “Control Job State” is the option that will become active once all crew members are on the current mobile app version.

Since the feature is controlled by a Role & Right, it can be activated for all users, or per user level. This creates the option for some businesses to have employees that can only view the job, and others that can view AND control their time.

Job Lead Impact
If a crew member can control their own time, this removes the option for the Job Lead to record their time. Only one mobile user can control an individual's time. When a Job Lead changes the job’s state, they will be prompted to select which crew member’s status they want to change. However, they will only get this prompt if they have crew members without time tracking permission. If all crew members can record their own time, then the prompt will not display.

If there is a mix of crew members who can control time and who can’t, these users will be grouped in the Crew list on the mobile. Same rules still apply, no crew member can control chargeable hours, that is a Job Lead function only.

After Read-Only has been activated, there is an additional option to allow crew members to be assigned to tasks on a job. Jobs can have many tasks within them, and now crew members can be assigned to tasks. If a crew member is assigned to a task, then they will have editing rights over that task. The crew member can complete the task, edit the task notes, add attachments, add items, etc. The crew member will only have a Read-Only view of the other tasks and job details since they are not the Job Lead.

When a task is assigned to a crew member, the Job Lead will not have editing permissions to that task. They will only be able to edit tasks assigned to the Job Lead or unassigned tasks. The Job Lead will not have editing rights of tasks assigned to other crew members.

Activating Crew-Assign
Crew assign can only be enabled after Read-Only is activated for the business. Similar to Crew-Time, this is controlled through a Role & Right. Toggle on the “Control Job Task” to enable mobile users to work their assigned tasks.

Once activated, if a crew member is listed as a mobile user and has assigned tasks, then those tasks will only be editable on the crew member’s device that they are assigned to. They will be view-only on the other crew member mobile devices after they sync and receive the settings change. Only one mobile device can have access to edit a task. With Control Job Task disabled, it leaves the control of the task to the Job Lead.

Crew-Assign can be enabled for an entire user group or per user. If there are different users with different Roles & Rights, then the Job Lead could control tasks for some users, and not for others.

Job Lead Impact
The Job Lead on the mobile can identify which tasks need to be edited based on the way it’s shared to show if it’s view-only access or not.