Job Requests from a Client

A client whose own software has API access can ask you for work at one of its sites. The request is not a job: nothing is booked, no job number is taken, nobody is emailed. It waits on Jobs → Requests until you answer it, and the client reads your answer back where they raised it.

When a Request Arrives

Every manager of the company gets a bell notification, New job request from {client}: {title}, and the Requests button on the Jobs page shows how many are waiting. Nothing is emailed.

The Job Requests Page

Jobs → Requests lists requests with the date they were raised, the title, the client and site, the preferred period, who asked, and the state: Pending, Approved (with the job number), Declined or Cancelled (withdrawn by the client before you answered). Pending ones are shown by default; the filters at the top show the others, or one client's.

Click a request to open it under the list: the full description, the system it is about when the client named one, the preferred period and notes ("mornings only"), who asked and how to reach them, and, once answered, when, by whom and what was said.

Approve and Book

Approve and book creates the job and sends the client your message. The form is filled in from the request and you change what you need:

• Title, Description and Priority, as the client wrote them.
• Job type: the type you used last for this client, else your default.
• Date and Time: the first day of the preferred period at 09:00, or tomorrow when no period was given. Give them the day they asked for or another free one.
• Engineers and the Lead engineer.
• Email the client: the client's contacts ticked for job emails, exactly as on a new job. They get the usual Job booked email once the job exists.
• Message to the requester: required. It starts as Booked for {date}.; say who is coming and when. This is what the person who asked will read.

Submitting books the job through the same rules as any other job. Its internal notes start with Requested by {name} via API on {date}, and the job page shows Raised as a request by {name} with a link back here.

This is a service visit of the system

When the client named a system ("the CCTV in reception"), the job's notes say so (About: CCTV, Reception) and nothing else changes: a camera that has died is not a service of the CCTV system, and completing the job must not move its service dates.

Switch on This is a service visit of the system only when the request is the system's service ("the alarm is due its annual"). The system is then linked to the job, the job counts as its service visit, and completing it records the service and sets the next service date, as a generated service job does.

Decline

Decline asks for a message and sends it back. No job is created. Say why, and what the client should do instead if anything: it is the only answer they will see.

Two People Answering at Once

A request is answered once. If a colleague approved or declined it while you had it open, your answer is refused with This request has already been answered and the list refreshes. No second job is created.

What the Client Sees

The client's software reads the request back with its state, your message and, once approved, the job: its number, its status, the date and time exactly as you typed them, and the engineers' names. When the job is later completed or cancelled, the status follows.