Work order types are the families your work is sorted into — Repair, Production, Package Dispatch and so on. Until recently the list was fixed in the software. Now an administrator can add one, and decide who is allowed to work on it.
What a type actually does
A type does three jobs, and it is worth knowing them before you add one:
- It sorts the WorkFlow library and the Work Orders dashboard. Picking a type is how someone narrows a long list down to the handful that apply to them.
- It controls who sees the work. Access is granted per type, so a person can be given warranty claims without being given everything else.
- It scopes the WorkFlows underneath it. A WorkFlow belongs to exactly one type.
Adding a type
Go to Admin › Work order types and choose New type. You need the Work order types permission; it is deliberately separate from general work order administration, because deciding what kinds of work exist is a different job from running the work.
You will be asked for two things that matter:
- Name — what people read. "Warranty claim". This can be changed later.
- Code — the short shouted identifier, like
WARRANTY_CLAIM. The code is permanent. It is what every work order of this type is stored against, so renaming it would orphan them. Choose it as if it were going to outlive you, because it is.
The description, icon and order are cosmetic and can be changed whenever you like.
Saying who may work on it
Open the type's row on the same page. You will see a grid of people against seven actions:
| Action | What it allows |
|---|---|
| Admin | Everything below, for this type |
| Read | See work orders of this type |
| Write | Work on them and log progress |
| Delete | Cancel or delete them |
| Release | Send a draft to the floor |
| Create | Raise one from a WorkFlow |
| Create blank | Raise one from nothing |
Add a person, tick what they need, then Save access. Whoever creates the type is given Admin on it automatically, so it is never stranded with nobody able to reach it.
A new type is private until you grant it. Nobody sees work of that type until they are given Read or better — or unless they already hold full work order administration.
Making the work runnable
A type on its own does nothing. Work is defined by a WorkFlow — the ordered steps a job goes through. Go to Production › WorkFlows › New WorkFlow, choose your type, and give it a name.
WorkFlows are only created in that library, and it has its own permission. The Work Orders dashboard lets you pick an existing WorkFlow when raising a job; it will never let you invent one there.
Then Work Orders › New Work Order asks what kind of work it is, which WorkFlow it runs from, and the details of this particular job.
The one limit worth knowing
A type you add gets its own filters, its own permissions and its own WorkFlows. It does not get its own screen. Repairs and assemblies have purpose-built pages because somebody wrote those pages; a new type runs on the standard work order screen, which handles any WorkFlow you can define.
If a type genuinely needs a bespoke screen, that is a development request, not something you can configure.
Retiring a type
Types are retired, never deleted. Retiring takes it out of every picker, so nobody can choose it again — but every work order already recorded against it stays readable, exactly as it was. Deleting would leave that history pointing at nothing.
Retire from the same page, and reactivate the same way if you retire one by mistake.