Archibus SaaS / Maintenance / Background Data - Maintenance
Maintenance / Corrective Maintenance / Background Data
Maintenance / Preventive Maintenance / Background Data - Maintenance

Define Trades, Work Teams, Craftspersons, and Supervisors

Both the Corrective Maintenance and Preventive Maintenance applications provide tasks for defining trades, work teams , craftspersons, and supervisors.

This topic has the following sections:

Trades

Run the Define Trades task to access the Trades table and record basic information about the trades of the craftspersons who work at your site. Trade Code is a required field and defines skill categories by which you group craftspersons; mechanic, plumber, and electrician are examples.

The system uses the trade's rate information (hourly rate, overtime rate, and so on) to estimate a job's cost; the trade rate information does not contribute to the calculations of a work order's labor costs. The labor cost of a work order is determined by the hourly rates that you enter for the specific craftspersons that are assigned to the job.

Work Teams

Your site may group together maintenance personnel of different skills (plumber, electrician) and performing various tasks (executing work, approving, estimating work) into a work team. Use the Define Work Teams task to define your work teams so that you can assign maintenance staff to them.

You enter the work team name and description, and then select Yes or No for the following to indicate if the craftsperson can self-assign work.

Craftspersons assign themselves? If set to Yes, craftsperson can view all unassigned work for the work team, and can assign work to themselves. This work has the status Approved, or Assigned to Work Order. If set to No, craftspersons see only the work assigned to them. This work is Issued.

Note: Craftspersons can belong to more than one work team. See Assigning maintenance workers to more than one work team later in this topic.

Craftspersons

A craftsperson can be an outside contractor or an internal employee who handles maintenance work. As with internal employees, outside contractors can log into the Archibus system and also receive email notifications about work.

Run the Define Craftspersons task to access the Craftspersons table and record information about your in-house and external craftspersons. Be sure to include their hourly and overtime rates for cost calculations.

The Define Craftspersons view (ab-cf-edit.axvw) has two tabs:

Fields on the General Tab

Craftsperson Code A unique value that identifies this craftsperson. For example, you may want to enter only the last name as the Craftsperson Code and then enter the complete name in the Craftsperson Name field.
Craftsperson Name Enter the craftsperson's complete name.
Reports To Choose an employee to whom this craftsperson reports. This field is for information only and is not used in any of the work approval or routing options.
Status Set the status to Inactive if you don't want this craftsperson to appear as an available craftsperson when you are assigning work. For example, if craftspersons are not available due to injury, you can set this status to Unavailable until they return.
Standard Hours Available Enter the number of hours that this person is typically available in one day.
Primary Trade Choose the trade from the validating list. Associating a craftsperson with a trade enables users to search for craftspersons according to trade.
Email

You can directly enter the email address that will be used when routing work to this craftsperson. The craftsperson's email should match the same value as found in the Users table.

Alternately, if the craftsperson is already entered as a user or as an employee, you can use the Link button to auto-populate the email address with values. This facilitates data entry and avoids errors. Since the email address of the craftsperson, employee, and user must all match in order for the system to process mail, keeping these email addresses in sync is important.

  • Click "Link>To User" to select from a list of User email addresses.
  • Click "Link>To Employee" to select from a list of employee email addresses.

In house / Contractor

 The Craftspersons table can hold both your in-house employees and external craftspersons that you hire for specific jobs. Storing external craftspersons in this table enables you to choose them to assign to a job and calculate costs based on their rates. Use this field to indicate if the worker is in-house or a contractor.
Special Skills Use this memo field to enter any information that may be helpful when scheduling this craftsperson. For example, if a painter specializes in detailed trim painting, enter it here.

Hourly Rate

Overtime Rate

Doubletime Rate

Enter the craftsperson's labor rates. The values that you enter are completely independent of the rate values that you enter for a craftsperson's trade. The trade rates are used for estimating only.

When completing work, the supervisor or craftsperson enters the number of regular, overtime, and doubletime hours spent on a job. The system then uses these hours and the craftsperson's hourly rates to calculate the labor cost of work.

Expiration Dates Enter the expiration dates for the craftsperson's contract, Workmen's Comp., auto insurance, and liability insurance, if you want to track these dates.
Craftsperson Unschedule Self?

This field determines if the craftsperson is able to return work requests that have been assigned to them. When a work request is returned, the craftsperson is no longer assigned, and the request's status is set back to Assigned to Work Order (AA)

This field will default to No for non-supervisors, and default to Yes for supervisors.
Create User?

In order to enable the craftspersons to log into Archibus and see their assigned work, they must exist in the Archibus Users table. If the craftsperson does not yet exist in the Archibus Users table, choose this button, and the system presents a form for creating a record for this craftsperson in the Archibus Users table. The form also has options for enabling mobile features for this user.

When you select Yes for this field, the application creates an afm_user account at the same time as the craftsperson is created. The "Add User" portion of the form automatically assigns the user a role of OPS SUPERVISOR (ACP) or OPS SUPERVISOR (ACP). These roles exists in the HQ sample database. but not in the Schema database, so you will need to create these roles before adding a craftsperson as a user.

On Archibus SaaS deployments, you also need to specify whether or not craftspersons receive mobile-only tasks or also Web Central tasks. See the section Assigning roles to craftspersons later in this topic.

Additionally, you can add the craftsperson as an employee (create a records in the Employees table) so that they are in the list of requestors shown on the Report Problem form. To do so, choose the Auto-Create Employee option from the New User form presented by this option.

Note that the email address of the craftsperson, employee, and user must all match in order for the system to process mail.

For more information on Archibus users, see: 

A work team can have supervisors, planners, estimators, and workers. Use the following fields of the Craftspersons table to specify a user's role within the work team. Note that a craftsperson may have a combination of any of these roles. For example, a craftsperson may be a planner (Is Planner? set to Yes) and also have work assigned to them.

Work Team Codes

the work teams to which the craftsperson belongs.

Note:  If you want to add a craftsperson to multiple work teams, you must first save the craftsperson record. An Edit button then appears that you can use to select multiple work teams.
Is Planner? the craftsperson may schedule jobs assigned to the work team
Is Estimator? the craftsperson can make estimations, regardless of the work team assignment
Is Supervisor?

the craftsperson is a supervisor of the Work Team. Set this field to Yes so that this craftsperson can assign work for this work team. If you designate a craftsperson as a supervisor, this craftsperson must be a supervisor for all work teams the craftsperson is assigned to; that is to say, you cannot make this same craftsperson a non-supervisor craftsperson for another work team.
Craftsperson Position If needed, enter more information about the craftsperson's job in this field.
Can have work assigned? the craftsperson can have work assigned to them. Use this field to specify if a  Supervisor/Planner (set by Is Supervisor?) can also execute the work.
Can change work request?

the craftsperson can change request parameters (such as, Problem Type, Location, Description, or Equipment) after the work is issued. This field defaults to No for non-supervisors, and defaults to Yes for supervisors, but you can change this as your workflow requires.

Note: This field does not apply to requestors.

At this point, the craftsperson has a permanent schedule, which you can view in the Daily Schedule tab. You will see one schedule and it will have no dates. If you with to define holidays, vacations, special projects, and so on for the craftsperson, you can define the daily schedule. See:

Enabling craftspersons to sign in and receive email

The above section provides tools for automating this process, but in general you must follow these steps to give outside contractors and in-house employees the ability to receive email and log into the Archibus system.

If a craftsperson is an outside contractor:

  1. Create a record in the Craftspersons table.
  2. Set the In-house/Contractor field to Contractor. Enter an email address.
  3. Create a record in the Archibus Users table for this craftsperson. Enter the same email address as found in the Craftspersons table.

If a craftsperson is an in-house employee:

  1. Create a record in the Craftspersons table.
  2. Set the In-house/Contractor field to In-House. Enter an email address.
  3. Create a record in the Employees table. Enter the same email address as found in the Craftspersons table.
  4. Create a record in the Archibus Users table for this craftsperson. Enter the same email address as found in the Craftspersons table.

Designating supervisors

Each work team must have at least one supervisor.

A craftsperson is designated as a supervisor by setting the Is Supervisor? field to Yes on the Define Craftsperson field.

Assigning maintenance workers to a single work team

The Craftsperson Work Team table (cf_work_team) stores a record for each craftsperson / work team assignment. When using only one work team per craftsperson or supervisor, the system auto-populates the Craftsperson Work Team table with the Work Team Code entered into the Craftspersons table using the Define Craftsperson form.

Assigning maintenance workers to multiple work teams

Craftspersons, including supervisors, can be part of one or more work teams. Assigning to multiple work team gives you more flexibility when scheduling work. For example, you can create work teams based on location and others based on trade. A craftsperson can be part of both location-based and trade-based work teams, enabling supervisors from either of these work teams to make assignments.

The Craftsperson Work Team table (cf_work_team) stores a record for each craftsperson / work team assignment. The system auto-populates this table using the Work Team Code for the craftsperson in the Craftspersons table. The system determines the work team assignment based on the assignment in the Craftsperson Work Team table

For reporting purposes, you can designate one team as the craftsperson's main work team.

To assign multiple work teams

  1. From the Define Craftsperson form, click Edit next to the Work Team Codes field.

    Note: The Edit button appears only after you save the craftsperson record.

    The Assigned Work Teams column shows any work teams currently assigned to this craftsperson.

  2. In the Available Work Teams column, select the check boxes for the work teams to which you want to make assignments, and click Assign.

    The selected work teams now appear in the Assigned Work Teams column.

  3. To designate a work team as the Main work team, select the Main Team? option button for that work team in the Assigned Work Teams column. The main work team is used for reports that are based on work team assignment.
  4. If you are changing the main work team assignment, you are asked to confirm the change. To proceed, click Yes.
  5. Close the Assign Work Team form.

Assigning roles to craftspersons

Note: The values listed in this procedure are for the non-SaaS offering.

When creating a role for a craftsperson, you create the role, add security groups for the role, and assign processes to the role as described in the following procedure. The procedure describes adding the following roles:

To create user roles for the craftsperson:

  1. Create the roles
    1. Select the System / Archibus Administrator - User and Security / Add or Edit User Roles task.
    2. Click Add New and the Edit User Role form appears.
    3. In the Role Name field, enter OPS CRAFTSPERSON (ACP).
    4. In the License Level field, select Activity ACP.
    5. Click Save.
    6. Click Add New to create an additional role.
    7. In the Edit User Role form, enter OPS SUPERVISOR (ACP) for the second role, and select Activity ACP for the license level.
    8. Click Save.
  2. Add security groups to the roles
    1. Select the System / Archibus Administrator - User and Security / Assign Security Groups to Roles task.
    2. For both of the newly added roles, add the security groups % and OPS-MOB:
    3. Select the OPS CRAFTSPERSON (ACP) role in the Roles list.
    4. In the Security Groups pane, click Add New.
    5. In the Security Groups pane on the right, enter % in the Group Name field.
    6. Click Save.
    7. Click Add New again.
    8. Add OPS-MOB in the Group Name field.
    9. Click Save.
    10. Repeat these steps, but this time select the OPS SUPERVISOR (ACP) role.
  3. Assign processes to the roles
    1. Select the System / Archibus Administrator - User and Security / Assign Processes to Roles or Users task.
    2. In the Available Processes pane, add the process AbBldgOpsOnDemandWork-Craftsperson_WEB BldgOpsConsole to the OPS CRAFTSPERSON (ACP) role.
    3. Add the process AbBldgOpsOnDemandWork-Supervisor_WEB BldgOpsConsole to the role OPS SUPERVISOR (ACP).
    4. You make then assignments by selecting the check box for the process in the Available Processes pane and clicking Assign

In addition to establishing the above information, the business process owner needs to set up other users and roles and assign them to processes.

For more information on users and roles, see: 

The OPS CRAFTSPERSON (ACP) role on Archibus SaaS

Note that for Archibus SaaS, the OPS CRAFTSPERSON (ACP) is a mobile-only role. After you define a new user for this role, the default behavior is that when this user signs in to Web Central, they see the "No Activities are assigned to OPS CRAFTSPERSON (ACP) role" message. They will be able to access Maintenance tasks via mobile only.

If you prefer to see the Web Central Maintenance tasks in Web Central for users of this role, run the System / Add-In Manager / View Tasks by Process and Application task to edit the License Level field of the afm_processes table. Change the license level from "Client/Server" to "4 - Process Owner" for AbCloudBuildingOperations.

If you prefer not to see the Space Book and Space & Occupancy survey tasks for users of the OPS CRAFTSPERSON (ACP) role, you can unassign these tasks using the System / Archibus Administrator - User and Security / Assign Processes to Roles or Users task.