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Corrective Maintenance / Maintenance Console

Preventive Maintenance / Maintenance Console
Maintenance Mobile App

Rejecting or Canceling Work Requests

Working from the Maintenance Console, you have the option to reject the work if a work request has a confirmation or edit and approve workflow step.

• Confirmation steps - Give the ability to approve some aspect of a work request, but do not include the ability to edit the request when the approval is given. You can add the following types of confirmation steps to an SLA:
  • Approval. When a work request has the Requested status, you can set up a Confirmation step that includes the ability to approve (but not edit) the request. Confirmation approvals can be manager approvals, facility approvals, or financial approvals.
  • Estimation or Scheduling. When a work request is either Approved or Assigned to a Work Order, you can set up a confirmation step that includes the ability to approve the estimate, or approve the schedule. The SLA would also need to include the estimation or scheduling step that is being confirmed.

• Add Edit and Approve step - You can define an Edit and Approve step for Corrective Maintenance work that has the Requested status. An Edit and Approve step enables the approver to edit the request information as well as to approve it. For example, the approver could clarify or modify problem type, description, and other request fields, so that the request gets routed to the right work team. Edit and approve is also used to approve work that may be optional or incur high expense, such as painting an office, or it can be used for work that must have a priority set by a manager.

If you reject a request, it is not archived, but instead is returned to a prior step and / or status. This gives the person who submitted the request, estimated it, or scheduled it the opportunity to make changes and resubmit the request. As the Approver, you also have the option to cancel the request if you don't want the requester, estimator, or scheduler to have a chance to resubmit the request.

There are two step types that can result in a rejected work request: Approval and Confirmation. The behavior of the work request will differ depending on the type of step that is involved.

When you reject a request that has an Edit and Approve step, the request is returned to the requestor who can then update the information and resubmit the request.

How the system routes rejected work requests

When you reject a work request, the system will create a new record in the helpdesk_step_log. This record will be on the Rejected status and it will tell the system what actions can be taken on the request and how the request will proceed once those actions are completed. A new database field will be added to help track this information:

helpdesk_step_log.rejected_step

The system will populate this field with the status and step_ordering_sequence of the step to which the Approver has rejected the request. The format will be (status);(ordering_sequence).

For example, suppose an SLA has two workflow steps on the Approved status: estimation and estimation approval. The approver on the estimation approval step rejects the work request and chooses to send the request back to the estimation step. The system will create the new helpdesk_step_log record and populate the rejected_step field with the value A:1. This represents the workflow step that occurs on the Approved status, with an ordering sequence of 1. When the estimator resubmits this estimation, the system will know to proceed to the next SLA step after this one.

If, when rejecting a work request. the approver chooses a non-workflow step, such as Requestor, Issuer, or Completer, the rejected_step field will be given just the status value of R (Requested), I (Issued), or Com (Completed). No step ordering sequence will be listed.

The system populates the helpdesk_step_log.step_type according to the step to which the Approver has rejected the request.

• For Estimation and Scheduling steps, the new helpdesk_step_log record will have step_types of Estimation or Scheduling, respectively.
• The system will populate the field Response by User Name, Response by Employee Name, Response by Craftsperson, etc., based on the selection of the Approver.
• All other rejections (Requestor, Issuer, or Completer) will result in a step_type of Basic, and no Response by User Name will be recorded.

Approvers returning a rejecting work request to a requestor (edit and approve)

If an approver rejects a work request during an Approval step, such as Edit and Approve, the system updates the request to the Rejected status and adds a new record to the helpdesk_step_log. This record updates the Approval step with the Date Responded, and adds the approver's comments. This helpdesk_step_log record will remain in that table and not become archived.

The request is returned to the requestor's queue where it now has the Update action button that the requestor can use to make changes to the original work request based on the approver's comments. The Update button opens up the Work Request form. The approver’s comments will be visible in the History and the maintenance activity log so the requestor can see why their request was rejected. After making the updates, the requestor can resubmit the request without creating a new one.

Approvers returning a rejected request to an estimator or scheduler (confirmation approval)

If you reject a confirmation step that occurs on the Requested status (such as, Financial Approval and Manager Approval) this results in the work having the Rejected status. It appears in the requestor's queue in the Maintenance Console, just like for Approval steps.

If you as the approver reject a work request during a Confirmation step that is after the Requested status, such as the Approved (A) or Assigned to Work Order (AA) status, you are able to send the work request back to any of the following:

• Requestor
• Any prior Estimator or Scheduler step completer
• Issuer (only available for requests that are at or past the Issued status)
• Completer (only available for requests that have a Status of Complete)

The system will track the name of the users that issued or completed the work request. The Approve form will display the name of these users as the Issuer or Completer, so that you can select to return the request to them.

If you select to return the request to the estimator or scheduler, these users will see the rejected request in the Maintenance Console with the Estimate or Schedule action button. This button will open the usual Estimate or Schedule form. The estimator or scheduler can also open the Work Request to read the approver's comments to understand why the approver rejected the request.

The helpdesk_step_log record will tell the system how to process the request by reading the Rejected Step field after the user saves the new estimate or schedule.

Here is an example sequence of records in the helpdesk_step_log.

• In this example, user GSMITH creates a request that is auto-approved and auto-assigned to a work order.
• The SLA requires an estimation step and an estimation approval.
• Estimator AI completes the estimation, but then the approver AFM rejects the estimation.
• AFM sends the request back to AI to revise the new estimation. AI revises and saves the new estimation, and this sends the request back to the approver, AFM, who this time approves it

Approvers returning a rejected request to the issuer

If an approver rejects a request and chooses to return the request to the Issuer, that user will not actually have a workflow step to complete. Instead, the supervisors will see the request in the Maintenance Console in the Rejected status, with the same action buttons as they see on the AA status (Estimate, Schedule, Issue, Cancel). Craftspersons that belong to a work team that allows Self-Assign will also have those options for the request.

Approvers returning a rejected request to a completer

If an approver rejects a request and chooses to return the request to the Completer, the system will create a new Work Request Labor Assignment (WRCF) record for that craftsperson. That user will see the request in the Maintenance Console with the same action buttons as they see on the Issued status (Update, Complete, Return).

Dispatchers returning requests to a requestor or approver

Dispatchers also have the option to reject a work request. When the dispatcher rejects a request, the dispatcher must choose the person to whom to send the request. The system provides the following list of users in the Dispatch Work Request form:

• Requestor
• Approver (if there is a prior step type of Approval)

If the dispatcher rejects the request, the system updates the request to the Rejected status and add a new record to the helpdesk_step_log. The system will update the Dispatch step in helpdesk_step_log with Date Responded, add the dipatcher's comments, and set Step Status After to Rejected.

The rejected request appears in the Maintenance Console for the user that the Dispatcher chooses.

Note: Dispatchers cannot reject work requests in bulk. The ability to reject a work request and send it back to another user is available when dispatching a single work request. It is not available if you select multiple work requests.

Reject work requests from the Maintenance mobile app

If a work request has a confirmation or approval step and the request is rejected when it is in the Requested status, the rejected request is always sent back to the requestor. For confirmation steps that are not on the Requested status, you can choose the person to receive the rejected request.

However, when approving a work request on the Mobile application, the ability to choose the user to whom you are rejecting a work request will depend on the connectivity of the mobile device.

• If the device has a wi-fi connection, you have the ability to perform a live query to get the list of potential recipients to whom you can return the request. You select the recipient from the list.
• If no connection exists, a message informs you that the request will automatically be sent back one step. The workflow rule can be called when the request is later synched and the request will be returned to the user who most recently completed the step (or Issued, the work, etc.), as determined by the fields helpdesk_step_log.date_response and helpdesk_step_log.time_response.
• If the query fails, then the system will send the request back to the last user in the list of recipients and inform the user of this action.

Cancel work requests

If you do not want the work request to be resubmitted with new information, you, as the approver, can cancel the request. This will archive the work, and not return it back to any users. The work request is removed from the Maintenance Console, and it is not included in the count of open work requests. See Canceling or Stopping Work.

Reject work

Note: You cannot bulk reject work multiple work requests, so the Reject button is not available when you select the check boxes for multiple work requests from the Maintenance Console. You reject a single work request when working from the Approve form.

The Maintenance Console shows requests in the Rejected status (wr.status = ‘Rej’). When the console is showing requests that are grouped by Status, the Rejected status will appear as the top grouping.

To reject work requests from the Maintenance Console:

1. Locate work requests that requires approval. Review these requests to determine the ones you want to reject.
2. Select the request, and click Approve.

   The Approve form appears.

3. Do one of the following:
   • If this is an Edit and Approve step, enter your Comments and click Reject. The request is returned to the requestor who reads your comments and can update the request so that it can again be considered for approval.
   • If this is a confirmation approval, in the Return to section, select to whom you want the request to be returned, enter your Comments, and click Reject.

   The rejected request will appear in the Maintenance Console for the user that the Approver chose as described in the preceding sections of this topic. This user can edit information and resubmit the work requests using your Approver's Comments as a guide.

   Note: Once work is rejected, supervisors and craftsperson can edit the Description field only if their record in the Craftspersons table has the “Can Change Work Request” field set to “Yes”.