The emails WorkOrders sends

What your customer gets, and when

When a customer's request comes in by email or through the API, they get an email to say it has arrived, with its reference number. After that, they get an email when the job is booked in (someone has taken it and is coming), when it's marked in progress, and when it's completed. If you've set hours attending, the booked-in email tells them the technician expects to be there within that many hours.

Each email has a link straight to that one job, so the customer can check on it without an account or a password. If other people were cc'd on the original request (a property manager alongside the tenant, say), they're cc'd on every update too.

What your customer never gets

Some things are only ever seen by your team:

• The health and safety note: it goes to your company's own H&S address, never to the customer.
• Urgency: however urgent you've marked a job, the customer is never told.
• Internal notes and the job's full timeline. The customer only sees the emails sent to them.

Who it comes from

Every email your company sends comes from your own address on workorders.nz, something like hockley@workorders.nz, with your company's name on it. The footer you've set for your company goes at the bottom of each one.

Gmail shows "via workorders.nz" next to your name. That's expected. Email security checks (DKIM, SPF and DMARC) need the sending address to be on the same domain that signed the message, and that's ours. You can't send from your own domain, and we won't be adding that option. Mail sent that way fails those checks and ends up in spam, or doesn't arrive at all.

Replies thread back onto the job

Each job email has a reply address of its own. When a customer replies, their reply is added to that job rather than starting a new one, and it stays in the same email thread on their side.

What your own team gets

• A technician gets an email and a phone notification when someone else assigns them a job. If you take a job yourself, you don't get either.
• Owners and administrators get an email when a connected mailbox stops syncing and needs signing in again. See an email did not become a job for what happens to the mail in the meantime.
• Invitations and password resets come from hello@workorders.nz. They come from WorkOrders itself, not from your company.

What WorkOrders sends you about your own account

These emails aren't about any one job. They come from hello@workorders.nz, and they're from us to you.

When you sign up, we email you a link to confirm your email address. You need to click it before you can start using WorkOrders, and your welcome email arrives once you have. If you change your address later, we'll ask you to confirm the new one too.

In your first few weeks, the owner gets a few emails: the welcome, a reminder on day three if setup isn't finished, and a note on day seven if no real job has been through the board yet. Each one only arrives if it's still relevant. If you finish setting up on day two, you won't get the day-three email.

About your trial: a reminder five days before it ends, and an email on the day it ends. If the trial ends and you don't choose a plan, we send one more email about ten days later to say your account is still there. That's the last one.

Later on, if the board goes quiet, the owner may get an email asking whether something is wrong. That happens if jobs drop sharply compared with the month before, or if you're paying but no real job has ever gone through. It's sent at most once every couple of months.

Every Monday morning, owners and administrators get a summary of the week before: how many jobs came in, how many were finished, and how many are still open. We don't send it for a week where nothing happened, so if it doesn't arrive, it was a quiet week.

You can switch most of these off on your profile, or with the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email, which works without signing in. You can't switch off the trial reminder or the trial-ended email, because they tell you when you're about to lose access.

Your own notification preferences

Everyone in your company chooses for themselves, on their profile page, which of these they want and how: by email, or as a desktop browser notification. Only the emails and notifications sent to you personally are listed. Emails to customers, to shared addresses like the H&S inbox, or to people who don't have an account yet aren't on the list.

• A new work order arrives: a desktop notification only, and off by default, because on a busy day you'd get one for every job.
• A work order is assigned to me: email and desktop, both on by default.
• A mailbox stops syncing: email and desktop, both on by default, and only offered to owners and administrators.
• Help getting set up, and the odd reminder: email only, on by default, and only offered to the owner. Turning it off doesn't stop emails about your trial or your plan.
• A weekly summary of the board: email only, on by default, offered to owners and administrators.

Technicians can't turn off the phone notification that tells the app a new job has arrived, because that's how jobs reach them. What they see on the phone, and what to do with it, is in taking a job.

Questions people ask