What's New

We've added refrigerant tracking to the appointment validation that applies only if:

1. UseRefrigerantTracking = True
2. The service call has equipment assigned to it where the equipment has a Refrigerant Equipment Type other than 0 - Not Applicable.
3. The service call does not have any refrigerant tracking records for at least 1 of the assigned pieces of equipment.

When completing the appointment, Add Refrigerant Tracking now displays in the Missing Recommended Data window.

This validation checks if the current user has not entered a refrigerant tracking record for at least 1 of the assigned equipment on the service call. Users can still select to complete the appointment without entering the refrigerant information.

• If only one piece of equipment is on the call with the appropriate requirements, when Add Refrigerant Tracking is selected, the Equipment form opens to the Refrigerant tab where users can enter and save information.

• If more than one piece of equipment matches the requirements, when Add Refrigerant Tracking is selected, the Service Call form opens to the Equipment tab with the equipment displays. The user will need to select the equipment and then select the Refrigerant tab to enter and save the refrigerant information.

In MobileTech Admin, we've added a Send Test Email button in the Setup Options window so that you can test your SMTP server settings in the Report Settings section. If successful, a "Test Email sent to Admin Email Address" message displays. If unsuccessful, an error message displays the system error(s). See Report Settings.

The email layout is as follows:

• From: if UseSMTPAuthentication then from SMTP username, otherwise AdminEmailAddress
• To: AdminEmailAddress
• Subject: MobileTech Admin Test Email
• Body: You have requested to send this test email from MobileTech Admin.

Event-based syncing now includes creating equipment and adding purchase order lines (see the note below for purchase orders). After saving the equipment or purchase order, technicians are prompted to sync their device if they have UseEventBasedSync turned on. See Mobile Device Global Settings .

To use event-based syncing after adding a PO line, you will also need to update Offline HTML to set the "usePOEventBasedSync" = true. The default for this variable is set to false. This variable is found in file entity\purchaseorderdetail\purchaseorderdetail-form.html in the MobileTech Woodford project.

Technicians can now view read-only historical task responses on an MCC (maintenance contract computer-generated) service call from the Task form by selecting the new Task Response History tab and then selecting the Redisplay icon within the expanded section to retrieve the task response history. Internet connectivity is required. This displays the task label and response for historical service calls on the contract. The number of historical service calls displayed is determined by the  MobileTech Company-Specific Settings  setup option  HistoryCount . The technician can collapse/expand the entire list or individual service calls. The historical responses remain on the device until the next device sync. See Complete Tasks for a Service Call. This option requires internet access.

We've added the ability for technicians to see other technicians scheduled for the same service call or job by selecting the new Related tab on the Appointment form and then selecting the Redisplay icon. Technicians can see the appointment status, technician name, appointment date/time, appointment description, and completion date. The list of appointments can be sorted by start date or appointment and/or the list can be filtered. This option requires internet access.

• Service appointments automatically show all appointments on the service call.
• Job appointments show only the appointments for the selected date range. The default date range is +/- 1 day. You can select any date range, however, be aware the larger the range the longer it may take to retrieve the data.

We've added a UseReplacementParts option in Equipment Settings to utilize replacement parts that are added to equipment in Signature. When set to True, the Parts tab is added to the Appointment Completion form for service appointments. When selected, replacement parts are listed and grouped by equipment assigned to the service call. The technician can select and add the replacement part as an inventory transaction. The information displayed on the Replacement Parts form includes the item number, description, quantity needed for replacement, and unit of measure. The quantity refers to the quantity added for the replacement part in Signature.

For information on using the Replacement Parts tab, see  Create a Replacement Parts Inventory Transaction. Replacement parts for equipment are added in the Replacement Parts window in Signature. See  Assigning Replacement Parts to Equipment.

If UseReplacementParts is true, then UseTaskMaterials in the  Task Settings  section must be false. 

We have added the ability to track the time and mileage taken to travel to or from an appointment. Travel can be started, paused, ended, or deleted. This option is available if UseLabor, UseTimeLog, and UseTravelTimeLog are all set to True in MobileTech Admin. See Labor Settings and Time Log Settings. To view more information on how to use the new feature, see Time In and Out of Travel.

Depending on setup:

• Travel can be required before a technician can work on an appointment.  
• The technician can be automatically timed in to the appointment when ending travel.
• The appointment status is automatically set when beginning or ending travel.
• Minimum travel time and mileage can be set.

We've added the six equipment user-defined fields to the bottom of the Equipment form. This includes the user-defined 1-5 (char(31)) and user-defined 9 (datetime) fields. For information about setting up the user-defined labels, see Labeling User-Defined Fields in the Service Management User Guide.

We've added a contract indicator that displays to the left of equipment that indicates the equipment is on a contract. This icon displays on the Location Equipment tab, Service Call Equipment tab, New Service Call form, and the BOB Equipment dashboard.

MCC (maintenance contract computer-generated) service call task notes are now available in the Task form as read-only. The technician can select the Task Note tab to expand the form to view the note. See Complete Tasks for a Service Call.

You can now add a custom statement that displays above the signature box on the Timesheet Signature form and is displayed on the Time Sheet Report. The character limit is 4000 characters. Keep in mind that longer statements will require technicians to scroll through the statement on their devices. The optional custom text is entered in Signature Settings.

To use this feature, you will need to deploy the updated Timesheet report. For information on deploying reports, see the Signature Reports Guide. 

Two new setup options have been added to Report Settings to provide the ability to turn off the summary reports when service and/or job appointments are completed. The default values are set to True.

• GenerateServiceSummaryReport
  If set to False:
  • The Call Summary Report or Service Appointment Report is not generated when a service appointment is completed.
  • The list of emails to select to receive the report will not display.
  • The Technician and Customer signature buttons will not show on the Summary tab.
• GenerateJobSummaryReport
  If set to False:
  • The Job Summary Report is not generated when a job appointment is completed.
  • The list of emails to select to receive the report will not display.
  • The Technician and Customer signature buttons will not show on the Summary tab.

Latitude and longitude data is now captured when the TimeLog form is initially opened for Time In/Time Out and for Travel Time Log if the device has GPS capabilities and a value is returned. This information resides in the  timelog  table in the MobileTech Middle Tier. The fields are gptimein_latitude, gptimein_longitude, gptimeout_latitude, and  gptimeout_longitude.  GPS information cannot be edited on devices.

If the travel time log is transferred, the original latitude/longitude values are used. Transferring the travel time log does not update the values.

We've updated how text input fields display on forms. Text input fields now contain descriptive text to help identify that these fields are editable and where to tap to add the text. Most text input fields display "Enter <field label>". On the legacy Job Safety Tasks form, the text fields display "Enter Response".

We've also updated the Date Time Minute drop-down to increment by 1 minute. Previously this was limited to a 5-minute increment. You can edit the minute increment value in the MobileTech Woodford file. See Edit Time Entry Minute Increment (optional). 

If you change the Time Log minute increment, this will change for all the date-time form inputs that have the ‘Normal’ style applied.

From the Appointment Completion form, when a technician selects one of the following tabs that opens a list that currently has no items, the corresponding form opens automatically so the technician can add that item: Time Entry, Inventory, or PO Detail tab. Previously, after selecting the tab, the technician would have to click the Add icon to open the form to create the item.

The form auto-open happens the first time you navigate to the corresponding tab within the same instance of the Appointment Completion form.

For example, from the Appointment Completion form, you go to the Inventory tab. The Inventory form automatically opens where you can add the new inventory item. You close the Inventory form without creating a new item (the inventory list is still empty). You click a different tab. Still in the same instance of the Appointment Completion form, when you click the Inventory tab again, the empty Inventory list displays. You would have to select the Add icon to open the inventory form.

The functionality has been added to the following lists but defaults to disabled (false). You can enable this in Offline HTML for each list by setting the variable autoOpenNewForm to true. Likewise, you can disable this for the Time Entry (from the Appointment Completion form), Inventory, and/or PO Detail lists by setting the variable to false. See Enable/Disable Automatic New Form for Empty Lists (optional).

• Additional Work
• Attachment
• Change Order
• Change Order Detail
• Meter Reading
• Note
• Refrigerant

Technicians can now add or edit a comment on the Task form. The new Comment field has a 120-character limit and is found in the Task Details section below the Description field. The Comment field is available with or without task responses set up for the task.

We've added the ability to set up your password complexity requirements, password expiration, and lockout mode in MobileTech Admin. While you can manually add the technicians' passwords in MobileTech Admin (see Add a MobileTech User) or in Resco's Admin Console (see Set Technician Passwords with Admin Console (optional)), you can use the Update Password Policy window to set up the complexity, password expiration, as well as the lockout mode. In MobileTech Admin, select Tools > Update Password Policy.

• When MobileTech users and administrators update their passwords, the password complexity is enforced.
• The password expiration applies only to MobileTech users, not to MobileTech administrators.
• If you've previously set up password complexity and lockout policy using Regex, those values will default into this window.
• If you do not have a password complexity set up, the Update Password Policy window automatically displays after these events:

• • Add Company Objects
  • Add/Update Organization Database
  • Change Administrator Password
  • Upgrade Resco Server

We recommend enabling all requirements and setting the minimum password length to 8 characters.

If you do not have a password complexity set up, the Update Password Policy window automatically displays after these events:

• Add Company Objects
• Add/Update Organization Database
• Change Administrator Password
• Upgrade Resco Server

• Technicians can now enter purchase orders on job appointments. We've added/updated the Purchase Order Settings section in the MobileTech Admin Setup Options window so that you can enable/disable the ability to add a purchase order to service and/or job appointments. The other remaining fields have not changed. See Purchase Order Settings for setup information and see Create a Purchase Order.
  • UsePurchaseOrderService: Determines whether the PO Line tab is available when completing service appointments. Technicians can use that tab to enter purchase orders. This defaults to True for new installations and retains the existing setting for UsePurchaseOrder if upgrading.
  • UsePurchaseOrderJob: Determines whether the PO Line tab is available when completing job appointments. Technicians can use that tab to enter purchase orders. This defaults to True for new installations and if upgrading retains the existing setting for UsePurchaseOrder.
  • PurchaseOrderValidationLevelService: The level of requirement for entering purchase orders before completing a service appointment. The default value is OPTIONAL for new installations and retains the existing setting for PurchaseOrderValidationLevel if upgrading.
    • OPTIONAL – Technicians do not need to enter purchase orders before completing appointments and are not prompted to enter them.
    • WARNING – Technicians are prompted, but not required, to enter purchase orders before completing appointments.
    • REQUIRED – Technicians must enter at least one purchase order before completing appointments.
• The job appointment summary tab has been updated to include a purchase order section.
• The Job Summary report has been updated to display a Purchase Orders section if PO lines exist for the job appointment. 

Users will need to deploy the updated Job Summary report. For information on deploying reports, see the Signature Reports Guide. If you will not be enabling UsePurchaseOrderJob, you do not need to deploy the report.

• Use the Mobile Purchase Order window in Signature to process the purchase order added to a job appointment as you would if the purchase order was added to the service appointment.

Technicians' latitude and longitude coordinates now automatically uploaded to the new audit_timelog table with a background sync to the middle-tier any time they time in, time out, or delete a time in. If you are using Travel Time Log, the coordinates automatically upload when travel time begins, pauses, resumes, ends, or if the travel time is deleted. See Travel Settings.

Some of the fields in the audit_timelog table include the name of the event (Time In, Time Out, Delete Time In,  Begin Travel, Pause Travel, Resume Travel, Delete Travel, and End Travel), the service call ID, job number, appointment ID,  employee ID, time in, time out, and latitude/longitude. 

To capture the data, the device must be connected to the server and have GPS Location turned on. If there isn't a connection or errors occur, an error message is saved to the JSBridge log file.

The audit_timelog table has been added to the clean-up job and only keeps entries that were modified in the last 21 days, which is the same functionality as the timelog.

When viewing the Job Detail for a job appointment, the Notes tab now includes all job notes including job, job cost code, change order, and job appointment notes. The Note tab is now always displayed, regardless of having a note attached. On the Note List, the note subject, creator, and date created as well as what the note references (note types (blue letters), appointment number, change order ID, job number, and job cost code) are displayed. Only the change order note can be edited. The job, job cost code, and job appointment notes are read-only.

In the screenshot below, the user created the note subjects to indicate the note type. 

We've added a new setup option to the Purchase Order Settings section called UsePONonInventoryItems. When set to True, this setting allows users to enter non-inventory items to purchase order lines. This defaults to True. See Purchase Order Settings.

Originally UseNonInventoryItems in the Inventory Settings section allowed your technicians to enter non-inventory items when completing appointments and adding to purchase order lines. The Inventory Setting now only applies when completing an appointment. See Inventory Settings.

You can now add a shortcut to the Purchase Order Lines list on the home screen. When selected, the PO Lines list displays all purchase order lines on the device. The information included in the list is the purchase order number, vendor, item number, item description, site, quantity, unit, and date as well as the associated appointment ID, service call ID, or job number. Only the technician's appointment purchase orders display in the list.

If the purchase order has not been synced to the back office, the technician can click on the PO line and then select Add PO Line to open the PO Line form to complete the new purchase order line. If the purchase order line has been synced, a message displays indicating that the purchase order cannot be modified. However, the technician can create a new purchase order line for the appointment by selecting the + icon to open the PO Line form and selecting the appointment. The PO Line form is completed as it was before. See Create a Purchase Order.

For information on how to add the PO Lines icon on the home screen, see Adding Purchase Orders' PO Lines to Home Screen (optional).

We've added the Enter Site Name toggle to the PO Line form if the technician has sites assigned but no inventory available for the site. The technician will need to enter the item number and description manually but can now have the option to select an assigned site instead of manually entering the site name. 

Technicians can now view all inspection reports related to an entity including those created by other technicians within a selected date range if an internet connection is available. On the Inspection Reports list, we've added date range selectors and a Refresh icon. The date range defaults to the filter of the current week and the previous week. The technician can enter a date range and then select the Refresh icon to view all related inspection reports that have been created by any user, not just for the current user. The inspection report list has been updated to include the date the inspection report was created, the user who created the report if an online fetch was performed, and the appointment ID if accessing the reports from the Service Call form.

This applies to the following forms:

• Additional Work
• Customer
• Location
• Equipment
• Service Call (including inspections for appointments on the service call) 

Users can now import a separate Woodford project that has Inspections enabled called MobileTech with Inspections 9-0-xx.woodford. This includes having branch/team entities enabled, Inspections is added to Home and Appointment forms. All Woodford projects are located in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Signature\MobileTech\Admin\Woodford folder. See Import the MobileTech Woodford Project.

• You will need to assign the Inspector Role in MobileTech Admin to any technicians who will be using Inspections (and the optional Job Safety Analysis). See Working with Resco Inspections (optional).
• For branch/team filtering, you will still need to complete the steps as outlined in Limit Inspections to Technician Teams and/or Branches (optional)

In the MobileTech Inspection Manager web app and Schedule, we now pull the technician's phone number from the K2A_ResourceExtension table, if available. The technician's phone number entered in Schedule (Administration > Resource Options) auto-populates in the Mobile Phone field in the MobileTech Inspection Manager web app (Technicians > select Technician). You will need to Load Data in MobileTech Admin (Tools > Load Data) to update the telephone number in the MobileTech Inspection Manager web app. If you update the technician's phone number in Resco Cloud, this will not update the phone number in Schedule.

You now have the option to link an inspection to all service appointments, all job appointments, and/or all equipment assigned to service appointments. This link is used to add an inspection to the appointment completion validation. Validation levels can be REQUIRED or WARNING. With REQUIRED, the inspection is required to complete the appointment. With WARNING, a technician can still complete the appointment without the inspection. Setting this up requires updating the link-appointment.js script in the MobileTech with Inspections Woodford project. You can limit the inspection to specific types of service appointments and/or equipment by adding the schema field name and value. See Inspection Validation During Appointment Validation Check (optional).

Inspections must be template dependent. To set up template dependency the inspection must use versioning and the dependency level must be set to full. For information on setting up, see Resco's wiki: https://docs.resco.net/wiki/Questionnaire_Designer#Creating_a_new_questionnaire.

Technicians can now select location contacts to send inspection reports to when completing the appointment. The Inspection Report Emails form is accessed just like the Summary report emails form, during the appointment completion process after selecting the checkmark. The inspection report is sent to the selected location contacts, the technician, and to the distribution list as set up in the Inspection Email Options window in MobileTech Admin. See Set Up Email Options for an Inspection Report (optional).

On the Inspection Report Emails form in MobileTech, all inspection reports created for the appointment are listed. The technician can expand the inspection report to view a list of the location contacts and then select the contacts to send the inspection report. Only one report attachment is sent per email. For example, if the technician created two inspection reports and selects the same location contact for each report, the contact will receive separate emails for each inspection report.

As with the automatic sending of the inspection report, in Report Settings, ReportEmailMode must be set to "Selected or entered by Technician" (see Report Settings) and in Inspection Email Options, the specific inspection report must be set up (see Set Up Email Options for an Inspection Report (optional)). 

IMPORTANT

The functionality for when the inspection reports are sent has changed. Inspection reports will be sent when the appointment is completed. Previously, the inspection reports were sent when the device was synced.

To disable the technician's ability to select location contacts for the inspection report, but still automatically send the report as set up in the Inspection Email Options window, you can set the Offline HTML variable 'sendInspectionEmailOnCompletion' to false in the entity > locationcontact > reportcontact-list.js.  

JSA (Job Safety Audit) Inspection reports do not display in the Questionnaire Report Emails form as there is already automated logic available. See Set up Report Email Options.

On the Job Safety Analysis Inspection form, the Technician name now auto-populates in the signature section. Technicians no longer have to manually enter their name.

This feature requires you to re-import the Job Safety Analysis.qbuilder questionnaire file into the Questionnaire Designer. See Enable Job Safety Analysis (optional).

We've updated the JSA Inspection form to use the Resco Cloud Summer 2022 Release's leaner JSON data storage option. We've also updated the JSA Inspection form to use versioning as Resco has deprecated the non-versioned inspection templates. 

If you were previously using the JSA Inspection form, you will need to reimport the template to utilize the updates.

For information including a YouTube demonstration from Resco, please go to https://docs.resco.net/mediawiki/index.php?title=Releases/Winter_2021.

• Platform
  • Tree view improvements
  • Simpler form rules
  • Pay with Resco (preview)
  • Add multiple records to the associated view
  • Integrations improvements
  • Resco Cloud connector
  • Web triggers for REST API
  • Web triggers for OData
  • Record Type translations support for Salesforce
  • Support for working with marketing campaign members for Salesforce
• Inspections
  • Buttons and reports

  • Import questions from images/PDF documents. See Import Templates to Resco Inspections (optional) in the MobileTech 9.0 Installation and Administration Guide.

    

    You can import up to 200 pages for free. If you need more,  set up an AWS account  and  activate Textract ; you can then enter your Amazon credentials in the Questionnaire Designer. If you will be purchasing a license, you will need  Analyze Document API for pages with tables and forms . The price per analyzed page (for the 1st million pages) is: $0.015 + $0.05 =  $0.065.

  • Questionnaire records are easier to reference

For information including a YouTube demonstration from Resco, please go to https://docs.resco.net/wiki/Releases/Spring_2022.

• Inspections
  • Multiselect actions for Questionnaire Designer 
  • Disable automatic reports in Questionnaire Designer
  • Display all images of multi-image question

  • Set up report command using Advanced Report Configuration 

    

    If you are currently using the JSA Inspection, you will need to reimport the Inspection template to use the updated Run Report command and the Advanced Report Configuration window. See Resco's Configure Run Report command wiki found at https://docs.resco.net/wiki/Configure_Run_Report_command.  MTW-2133

  • Create a new record from a lookup question
  • Reuse answers more effectively

  • Disable immediate filtering in Result Viewer 

    

    Resco has added an Apply filter changes automatically checkbox to the Resco Cloud Results Viewer. When marked, the filter is immediately applied as you enter characters in the filter section. When unmarked, a Search button displays at the bottom of the filter section that you will need to click in order to apply the filter.  MTW-1838

  • Export with question labels, not IDs
  • Default value for Image/Media question
• Tagged images on forms
• Resco Cloud authentication options
• Woodford command-line interface (CLI)
• Woodford GitHub integration improvements
• Debugger port change

For information about the following new Resco Inspection features, see https://docs.resco.net/wiki/Releases/Summer_2022#Inspections.

Inspections

• Leaner JSON
• Change group labels using rules
• Tweaks to the Yes/No question
• Static image size
• UI: Switching between groups & group icons
• Custom commands for Button components
• Grid layout editor improvements
• Reorder uploaded images
• New deprecations

For information about the following new Resco Inspection features, see https://docs.resco.net/wiki/Releases/Autumn_2022.

Inspections

• Improved grid layout editor
• Restrict image/media actions
• Restrict image/media display size
• Smart styles for yes/no questions
• Select language for questionnaire reports
• Dynamics backend integration improvements