Work orders

A work order is a ticket created by a user to describe and register manual work. Typical examples are relabelling products, repacking a returned batch, counting a zone, building promotional displays or any other value-added service a client asks for. Work orders are tickets of kind manual; you find them in the sidebar under Tickets › Work orders.

Compared to problems, work orders:

• are always created by a person;
• have tasks that you complete by hand (Boxture does not perform anything for you);
• can register time spent, units completed and a price per unit per task, which makes them suitable as a basis for invoicing extra work;
• can be linked to any organization you can see.

Creating a work order

1. Go to Tickets › Work orders (or Tickets).
2. Choose New ticket from the menu at the top of the list.
3. Enter a Subject: a short title, for example Relabel 500 units SKU 10023 for Retailer X.
4. Enter a Description. Use the editor for formatting, lists and links. The description is stored as the first comment of the ticket.
5. In the panel on the right, optionally choose:
   • Organization: the client the work is for (see Organizations);
   • Assignee: the contact who will do or coordinate the work;
   • Tags: free keywords, separated by commas, for example relabel,retailer-x;
   • Group: the team responsible (see Groups);
   • Priority: a number to rank work orders by.
6. Add one or more tasks (see below).
7. Save.

You are recorded as both the requester and the submitter of the ticket. The work order starts in state Open.

A description is required

A ticket cannot be saved without a description.

Tasks

The Tasks card lists the tasks of the ticket. An empty task row is always available at the bottom to add a new task. For each task you can fill in:

Field	Description
Status	The task's state: pending, processing or completed (read-only)
State event	Choose Process to mark the task as being worked on, or Complete to mark it done. Only the changes that are possible from the current status are offered
Related object	Optionally link the task to a record: choose the type (Order, Shipment, Container or BinLocation) and then search for the record by its number (orders also by customer reference number). A link icon appears to open the record
Name	The kind of work. Pick a name used before or type a new one, so similar tasks get the same name (useful for reporting and invoicing)
Description	What has to be done
Due at	Date and time the task must be done
Time spent	How long the work took, written as a duration such as 45m, 1h 30m or 2 hours
Units completed	How many units were handled, for example the number of labels applied
Price per unit and currency	The agreed rate per unit, for invoicing
Notes	Additional remarks

When a task is linked to an order, shipment or container, the ticket also appears on the Tickets tab of that record.

Task states

Pending → Processing → Completed
Pending → Completed

A task can be set to Processing from any state and to Completed from pending or processing.

Removing a task

Tasks can be removed with the delete action on their row, except when:

• the task has an activity (only on problems);
• another task depends on it;
• the ticket is solved.

Working on a work order

1. Open the work order from the list.
2. Use Pending when you are waiting for information (for example from the client), and Hold when the work is blocked by something outside your control. Reopen brings it back to Open.
3. Add comments to keep everyone informed: questions, decisions, photos of the result.
4. As tasks are done, set their state event to Complete and fill in time spent and units completed. Save the ticket (use Update and continue editing to stay on the page).
5. When all tasks are completed, click Resolve. The ticket becomes Solved.
6. Click Close to archive it when no further follow-up is expected.

Solved tickets are read-only

Once a ticket is solved its tasks cannot be changed any more. If you need to correct the time spent or add a task, Reopen the ticket first.

Following up on work orders

• Filter the work orders list on Group or Assignee to see the workload of a team or person.
• Filter on State = solved to find finished work, for example at the end of the month when preparing invoices, and export the list (see Exporting).
• The ticket page shows the Organization, State, Kind, Created at and the number of Comments in its side panel.

Who can do what

Every user who can open the Tickets menu can create work orders, edit them, add tasks and comments and change their state. Which work orders you see is decided by your account, contact, group and organization; see Which tickets you can see.