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  • 1.  Methods for easily viewing Assignments on in progress work orders

    Posted 04-05-2021 14:04
    Edited by Tim Pratt 04-05-2021 15:49
    Hi all, I'm wondering if people could share some best practices for easily viewing work order assignments in Maximo as a supervisor. I don't see great out of the box functionality for a supervisor to log in and quickly see how many work orders are assigned to each of the front line techs that they are responsible for assigning work to. 

    A little background on our configuration: We have added a field in the Person Group application called 'Role' with options of technician and supervisor. When a work order is created (WAPPR) it creates assignments for supervisors to review and approve work orders (APPR) and to assign a technician(s) for completion. This creates a workflow assignment for the technicians to do their work and get the work order to a status we defined as 'STAFFCOMP' which is a synonym of 'APPR' that allows supervisors to review and determine if any more work needs to happen before it is completed.

    We have built a Supervisor Start Center that accomplishes a number of things well. We have portlets for work orders that need to be approved/assigned, work orders that need to be reviewed, work orders recently completed, those in wmatl/wpcond status, and so on. The one thing we do not have is good visibility for supervisors to see things that are in between waiting to be approved and things that are complete, broken down by who is responsible for them. 

    We attempted to implement a solution that would display a chart in a result set by leveraging the relationship ASSIGNMENT.LABORCODE only to determine that Maximo is not capable of doing this correctly. Two issues occurred for us (1) All labor assignments for all work orders were displayed even when the query should have filtered it down to just areas of responsibility for the logged in Supervisor and (2) The expected Maximo behavior of clicking on a start center bar chart and having results filtered to just that bar didn't work. This was all reported and documented in APAR IJ00632. IBM tells us that there is no solution for this issue at this time. 

    My question for this group is, how are people accomplishing this? How do you view the current workload of technicians as a supervisor in a simple way? We want to be able to have supervisors quickly and easily access this information to make decisions about who on their team has capacity for additional work orders to be assigned to them. Any thoughts are appreciated.
    #WorkManagement

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    Tim Pratt
    Bates College
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  • 2.  RE: Methods for easily viewing Assignments on in progress work orders

    Posted 04-05-2021 14:38
    Hi Tim,

    I've designed a portlet for our various crew supervisors' start centers that breaks out their crews' work orders by technician, using an established query from Work Order tracking, and displaying it as a Pie Chart. It ends up looking like this, and is interactive, so you can click on a piece of the pie and be brought to a  list of technician's work orders in WO Tracking:

    Is that what you were looking for? If so, here's how we got those results:
    Go into work order tracking, and craft/save a query that looks for work orders that fall under the responsibility of each supervisor - whether that means including all their leads (techs), or their work groups, or crew assignments, will depend on how you track assignment to a specific supervisor. In my example above, we don't use the supervisor/person relationship from their Labor records, as that's more complicated than I need to get; I can get the same results searching by work group (persongroup) and/or crew designation in the WO tracking query.

    Once you have that query saved, go back to the Start Center and create a new result set portlet. 
    Use WOTRACK for the application, and find/select that query that you just crafted.
    In the "Selected Fields" section, select only the "Work Order" and "Lead" fields like this setup that finds all our Mechanical crew's work orders and displays them by lead (like the pie chart photo above):
    Click the "Chart Options" tab to select the kind of chart to display; select "Bar" or "Pie" in the Chart Type drop-down, and enter "LEAD" in the "Display By" field to tell Maximo to break the chart out according to who's in the LEAD field in each one. Pro tip: This is also a great way to instantly see how many of your work orders *don't* have LEADS filled in.
    Click the "Finished" button there to go back to the Start Center to see how it looks.

    Let me know if you have any questions. Hope that's helpful!
    -Amy Briggs
    Jackson Laboratory
    Bar Harbor, Maine


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    Amy Briggs
    Maintenance Planner
    The Jackson Laboratory
    Bar Harbor, ME
    207-288-6356
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  • 3.  RE: Methods for easily viewing Assignments on in progress work orders

    Posted 04-06-2021 08:46
    Amy, thanks so much, and great to hear from a fellow Mainer. 

    The solution you provided looks great, but doesn't look like it would quite fit into our configuration. We are relying on Workflow assignments to drive responsibility for both assigning work orders and executing them, so we actually do not use either the Work Group or the Lead fields on the work order level. The assignments live on their own separate table, hence leading to our issue displaying responsibility. Are you all using workflow to drive your processes? We are also trying to limit the number of start centers we have out there, so defining individual queries for each functional area would present a challenge in needing to have a whole bunch of different start centers. We also have a number of cases where there may be multiple people assigned to a single work order, so a single Lead field may not quite fit. How do you handle hat scenario?

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    Tim Pratt
    Bates College
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  • 4.  RE: Methods for easily viewing Assignments on in progress work orders

    Posted 04-06-2021 10:48
    Tim,

    Could you provide additional information?:
    1) The Object Structure used for the Result Set portlet (A screenshot from the Object Structures application would be best)
    2) The SQL from the Saved Query used in that Result Set
    3) Clarify: are the Supervisors entering data into Work Order Tracking's Assignments tab (or any equivalent you may have configured), or are the assignments created solely as part of the Workflow?  I'm trying to make sure I understand if the "work assignments" reside in the ASSIGNMENT table or in the WFASSIGNMENT table.

    Sadly, I think what you need could possibly be handled by Assignment Manager. . .but you can't use Assignment Manager in a Result Set (see previous thread).

    It's an interesting question you've posed, and I'm eager to come up with an answer to this too.  We've been using Maximo for a long time, back when the Lead field was really the only option.  We've continued that, so yes, I can make nice pie charts in the Start Center based on Lead, but we want to transition to using the Assignments table, so I too will need to solve this problem -- eventually.


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    Travis Herron
    Pensacola Christian College
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  • 5.  RE: Methods for easily viewing Assignments on in progress work orders

    Posted 04-06-2021 13:10
    Hi Travis, 

    1. We are using the REP_WOPLANACT Object Structure. We added the ASSIGNMENT Source Object ourselves and defined as you can see in the screenshot.
    2. ((woclass = 'WORKORDER' or woclass = 'ACTIVITY') and historyflag = 0 and istask = 0 and siteid = 'MAIN') and status in ('APPR','INPRG','REWORK') 
      and ownergroup in (select persongroup from persongroupteam where respparty=:user and b_role in ('Supervisor','Administrator'))

      3.  We are using workflow to create the actual assignments on the assignments tab of the work order. We have a workflow process where we are able to select a technician(s) that then have assignments created for them on the ASSIGNMENT table. I believe they also create WFASSIGNMENT table assignments, but we aren't relying on those to know who we expect to do the work.


      I will have to investigate Assignment manager and possibly add it as a  favorite application and define some queries in there. It doesn't seem like that will give a very good quick visual representation of what is going on though. We crossed a very difficult threshold in getting our supervisors logged in to maximo and performing some basic functions of using workflow. I would hate to have to add more steps to their process in order to view current assignments as well.



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    Tim Pratt
    Bates College
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  • 6.  RE: Methods for easily viewing Assignments on in progress work orders

    Posted 04-07-2021 09:57
    For the b_role custom field in the PERSONGROUPTEAM table, are the values stored exactly as you typed them there, upper case first character and the rest lower case?  I've had times where I might have put in some SQL that had, for example

    status = 'wappr'

    and that did not get the same results as if I had put in 

    status = 'WAPPR'  



    >>>It doesn't seem like that will give a very good quick visual representation of what is going on though.

    I was hoping it might be a way to get a bar chart in the Start Center.  Doing that next step of clicking on a particular bar and going to that application, no, not great.



    This is starting to look like the solution is going to begin with creating a custom Power App based on the ASSIGNMENTS table.  Or some other reporting mechanism (e.g. BIRT, or Cognos if you use it).  Or, does it have to be done via dashboard?  Having the Supervisors just go and run queries in Assignment Manager, or even better Scheduler if you have it, might help them reach your goal of determining who has availability to take on more work.


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    Travis Herron
    Pensacola Christian College
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  • 7.  RE: Methods for easily viewing Assignments on in progress work orders

    Posted 04-06-2021 12:57
    Remember, your queries can use substitution variables to decrease the number of queries you need to create. Examples:

    For Work Orders, your query likely starts with "((woclass = 'WORKORDER' or woclass = 'ACTIVITY') and historyflag = 0 and istask = 0) and…" so, depending on what you need, you can add:
    • Related to the current user's default insert site:
      • …(siteid in (select defsite from maxuser where userid= :USER))
    • Related to the current user being the person assigned as lead (replace 'lead' below with reportedby, supervisor, owner, buyer, etc., as needed)
      • …lead = (select personid from person where personid = (select personid from maxuser where userid = :USER))
    • Related to the current user being the person on a team assigned as owner group (replace ownergroup with persongroup (workgroup on screen) if needed)
      • ownergroup in (select persongroup from persongroup where persongroup in (select persongroup from persongroupteam where respparty in (select personid from person where personid = (select personid from maxuser where userid = :USER ))))
    In Purchasing
    • Purchase Orders with open receiving (use in Receiving and PO apps)
      • ((status in ('APPR', 'INPRG') and (upper(receipts) = 'NONE' or upper(receipts) = 'PARTIAL') and historyflag = 0)
    In cases dealing with dates
    • Dealing with dates, i.e. Reported 7 days ago
      • …(reportdate > getdate()-7)
        • getdate() for SQL Server; SYSDATE for Oracle


    Assignments are more complicated, and since you can have multiple work order tasks assigned to multiple, you need to be aware of that. But, to route a list of work orders based on assigned labor, here is an example:

    ((woclass = 'WORKORDER' or woclass = 'ACTIVITY') and historyflag = 0 and istask = 0) and (exists (select 1 from dbo.assignment where (laborcode = (select laborcode from labor where personid = (select personid from person where personid = (select personid from maxuser where userid = :USER)))) and (exists (select 1 from workorder yy where ((yy.istask = 1 and yy.parent = workorder.wonum ) or (yy.wonum = workorder.wonum)) and assignment.wonum = yy.wonum and yy.siteid = workorder.siteid) and siteid = workorder.siteid)))



    Final note: When you build one of these queries and save it in a work order application, the :USER will be changed to the current user. You will then need to edit the saved query, and change it back to 
    :USER

    I hope that helps.

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    Christopher Winston
    Projetech Inc.
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  • 8.  RE: Methods for easily viewing Assignments on in progress work orders

    Posted 04-08-2021 00:16
    Tim,

    Are you using any other WO Status between APPR and STAFFCOMP? 

    Upon initial glance it would appear that any WO in WAPPR is the responsibility of a supervisor, I am not sure how you are assigning the Person Group ownership/attribute to the WO record however, and that anything post APPR is the responsibility of the assigned Technician(s). Is this correct? And do you then just want to see a breakdown of the number of WO's assigned to each supervisor/tech?

    -Joe

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    Joe Lonjin
    Cohesive Solutions
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  • 9.  RE: Methods for easily viewing Assignments on in progress work orders

    Posted 04-08-2021 07:50
    Joe, the short answer is... Maybe. There can be other statuses in play between APPR and STAFFCOMP:
    • INPRG- Work order started but not yet completed
    • WMATL - Waiting for Materials
    • WPCOND - Waiting for Conditions
    • SUPREVIEW- Need a supervisor to review for some reason (creates an assignment for the supervisor)
    Generally yes though, you have the flow correct. We are creating the ownership from Service Group, which equals Person Group through workflow. Once the supervisor has assigned a technician(s) to the work order, the supervisor assignment is complete and then another assignment is created for the supervisor once it hits STAFFCOMP, or SUPREVIEW. 

    What we are trying to see are the records in between, where the techician(s) have responsibility for action on the work orders, but the supervisors don't have an active assignment for them. The use case is a sanity check for the supervisor to determine, in a very broad sense, what the capacity and current workload of the technicians they are responsible for is. We have not gone far on our planning/scheduling journey to get to the point of knowing how many labor hours are planned for each work order to factor that in to decision making, just a simple count of WO at this point. It would be a way for the supervisor to know both who has capacity for additional work and who they may need to check in with about completing the work orders that are assigned to them.

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    Tim Pratt
    Bates College
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