Maximo Open Forum

Most of us who have worked with Maximo over a long time, likely have a list of Maximo “pet peeves”. As much as we love Maximo, there is always room for some improvement, just like with any software application. However, one advantage Maximo has over many other applications is that it’s easy to configure Maximo based on your business needs.

Configurations are performed using standard Maximo functionality without the use of external programming tools. Configurations are very likely to be supported in newer versions of Maximo and are much easier to maintain for Maximo administrators. Configurations also do not require Java programming or making modifications to Maximo class files.

Here are a five popularly requested configurations that we love (and you may, too!):

SCAN AND ATTACH

• Problem: If you’ve ever had to scan and attach documents manually in Maximo, you know that the process involves scanning the document, emailing it to yourself, downloading it on your machine, navigating to the record you’d like to attach the document to in Maximo, and then uploading the attachment. This is fairly time consuming and requires the users to navigate through multiple interfaces.
• Solution: Email listeners in Maximo can be configured to automatically attach documents sent to a system-specific email address and allow users to specify the record number to be linked with the attachment in the Subject of the email.

SAVED QUERY MANAGER

• Problem: When you save a query in Maximo, it saves your PERSONID as the Owner of the Query. And as you may already know, only owners are allowed to edit Saved Queries in Maximo. This can potentially be a problem if queries need to be updated in future when the PERSONID that created the query is no longer active in Maximo.
• Solution: Saved Query Manager is an application developed by Ontracks to make all queries in the system available to Maximo administrators. It allows administrative users to then update queries created by any other user in Maximo.

WORKFLOW MASS UPDATE

• Problem: Workflow Assignments are a great tool to use in Maximo when records need to be assigned to one or more users in specific roles, allowing only those users to interact with the record in Maximo. However, when those users change roles or leave the organization, all workflow assignments for that user need to manually be re-assigned to a new person.
• Solution: An excellent workaround to this problem is the Workflow Mass Update solution. It is an application that checks all existing workflow processes for active assignments and compares them against the list of person records that are no longer active in the system. It can then reassign those records to a new user and allow the workflow process to continue without any manual intervention.

SEND EMAILS WITH PDF ATTACHMENTS

• Problem: Emailing a Purchase Order or a Work Order in Maximo to a vendor or a technician is time consuming and involves running the PO Details report or WO Details report, downloading it as a PDF and attaching it to an external email tool.
• Solution: A communication template can be configured to include the PDF output of a report as an attachment and sent to any email address from within Maximo. A shortcut button can also be added to the Maximo toolbar in the desired application, that opens a dialog where the user can enter the email address and press the Send button to email the latest version of the Maximo report associated with that record.

AUTO UPDATE START CENTERS

• Problem: A start center is a great tool to provide a dashboard containing relevant information for users as soon as they log in to Maximo. However, start centers do need to be updated sometimes after the users have already begun to use them and provided feedback. Each time the system administrators update Start Center templates in Maximo, all users that have access to that Start Center must knowingly update their individual Start Centers to download the latest updates.
• Solution: A Start Center Update Utility tool can be configured, that allows the system administrators to update each existing user’s start center using just a button click within the Security Groups application.

Note: The purpose of this post is to present solutions to common Maximo problems, without going into the technical details involved with each solution. 

Posted on behalf of Rachita Bhatia, a Managing Consultant at Ontracks. Her expertise lies in solution architecture for Maximo implementations, configuring system infrastructure, BIRT report development and providing Maximo user training workshops. For the past year, Rachita has been working with clients and IBM on various Maximo SaaS implementations.

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