The app on your phone

What the app is for

The app is for the work your crew does away from a desk: seeing what has come in, taking a job, and recording what happened on site. Everything else (connecting a mailbox, raising a job, running reports, changing your plan) happens on the website.

The app is free. You don't buy it separately and you aren't charged per device. A seat is a person, so someone who uses a laptop in the office and takes a job on their phone at the weekend is one seat.

Which phones it runs on

It runs on iPhone and iPad, and it's on the App Store. Search for WorkOrders, or follow that link. The store listing shows which version of iOS it needs. When this page was written, that was iOS 17.5 or later. If someone's phone is old enough for that to matter, check the listing, because it will always be up to date.

There's nothing to set up on the phone apart from installing the app and signing in. You don't type in a server address or install a profile. See signing in on your phone.

The three tabs

The app has three tabs along the bottom of the screen. Each one shows the same jobs, filtered a different way.

• New: every job in your company that nobody has taken yet. The tab shows a number badge with how many there are, so you can see it without opening anything.
• My: the jobs assigned to you, whether they're assigned, ongoing or completed.
• All: everything your company has, including other people's jobs and jobs that are already finished.

Everyone in the company sees the same jobs. My just shows your share of them.

Finding a job

Each tab has a search box that says Search work orders.... When you start typing, four options appear: All, Summary, Subject and Contact. Pick one to choose what to search in. For example, searching Contact for a surname gives you that customer's jobs, not every job that mentions the name. You can also search for a job reference, so a WO- number read out over the phone can be typed straight in. Search only looks in the tab you're on, so searching on My only finds your own jobs.

Above the first job is a line showing when the list was last updated, such as "Updated 2 min ago". While the app is open on screen, it refreshes about once a minute. You can also pull the list down, or tap the circular arrow at the top right. While someone has the app open, it's never more than about a minute behind the office.

What you can do to a job

When you open a job, you see the whole request: who sent it and their email address, the customer with a phone number you can tap to call, the site with an address that opens in Maps, the job's timeline, any notes, the attached files, and the original message. The What you can do card shows buttons for whatever you can do with the job right now:

• Assign to me, if nobody has the job. See taking a job.
• Mark as ongoing or Complete job, if it's yours. See updating a job from the van.

You can also add a photo or video from the job's Attachments card. See photos and files from site. Administrators can delete a job too. The app asks for a reason and won't delete it without one, just like the website.

If you can't see a button, it's because you can't do that to this job. The ongoing and complete buttons only appear on your own jobs, and Assign to me only appears when nobody has the job.

What it leaves to the website

These things can only be done on the website:

• Raising a job. Work arrives by email or is typed in at a desk. See how work gets into WorkOrders.
• Giving a job to someone else. Technicians take their own jobs. The office reassigns jobs from the board.
• Signing off a health and safety note. Someone other than the person who wrote the note needs to read it. See health and safety from the van.
• Reports, the export and the workload calendar. The export includes every customer's contact details, so it's limited to owners and administrators on the website.
• Anything in Settings: your company details, your team, mailboxes and your plan.

The gear, and what is behind it

The gear at the top left of the list opens Settings. It shows the name, email, contact number and organisation the phone is signed in as, a Role row if you're an administrator, and Sign out. Below that, About WorkOrders shows the app version, what it's connected to and when it last synced. If two people are seeing different things and you're on the phone trying to sort it out, that's the screen to read out.

The first time you see the job list, iOS asks whether WorkOrders can send you notifications. Say yes, so your phone buzzes when a new job comes in. If you say no, the app still works and the list still refreshes about once a minute, but you won't hear about a new job until you open the app.