Taking a job

A new job goes to everybody at once

The office doesn't have to work out who's free. A new job isn't assigned to anyone. It appears on the New tab of every phone in the company at the same time, and the number on the tab goes up by one. If notifications are turned on, the phones buzz.

The job stays there until someone takes it. It doesn't expire, it isn't handed out automatically, and no one person is responsible for it. Whoever is free can take it.

Taking one

There are two ways, and they both do the same thing:

• Open the job and tap Assign to me in the What you can do card.
• Swipe the row to the right in the list and tap Assign to Me.

Either way, a screen headed Claim job opens. Neither button appears on a job someone else already has. But if you can see one, that only means the job was free the last time your phone checked. Someone may have taken it since. See below.

Hours before you're onsite

The claim screen asks one question, with a stepper: Hours before you're onsite, from 0 to 48. Underneath, the app shows the date and time that works out to ("Expected onsite Thursday, Aug 14 at 2:30 PM"), so you can see exactly when you're saying you'll be there.

The customer sees this. The screen says so: "The customer is told when to expect you, so a rough number beats none." When you claim the job, the customer gets an email that names you and says you'll be there within that many hours. A rough guess is better than leaving it at zero, because zero tells the customer you're on your way now.

Then press Assign to me. The job moves to assigned and appears on your My tab, and the customer gets their email. That's all you need to do.

"Already taken" · somebody beat you to it

Because every new job goes to everyone, two people can be looking at the same job at once, and one of them will be a second too late. When that happens, the app doesn't show an error, because nothing has gone wrong. It shows an alert headed Already taken, saying Someone else has already taken this job.

Press OK. The claim screen closes and the list refreshes, so that job no longer shows as available.

You might also see This job has moved on, followed by a message from WorkOrders, usually "WorkOrder not found. Please refresh and try again." or "This WorkOrder is unassigned or has already been completed." It means the same kind of thing: the job changed while you had that screen open. Press OK and the list refreshes in the same way.

Once it's yours

A job you've claimed disappears from everyone else's New tab. They can still see it on All, with your name on it, but only you can mark it ongoing or complete it. If someone else tries, they're told Not yours to do.

The office can still step in. An administrator on the website can reassign a job, or complete one for a technician who has gone home with it still open. You can't do that from the app. See a work order, start to finish for what the office can do on the website that a phone can't.

When someone in the office assigns you a job, you get an email about it and your phone buzzes. If you take a job yourself, you don't get either, because you already know about it.