Administrator Guide 2017
Concepts - Job definitions and templates

Templates are an essential component of magic5, defining what information is to be collected on the device.  Used in conjuntion with an (optional) Job definition office users can add pre-defined, up-to-the-minute information for device users, including as customer, location, contact details, health & safety regulations, customer credit status, etc.

Job definitions

Every job in magic5 uses a specific job definition such as 'Job', 'Service', 'Installation', 'Delivery', 'Collection', 'Callout', 'Project' or 'Work order'. Job definitions have a flexible way of sending tasks or information to mobile devices and this means that main forms can be supplemented with less obvious examples such as 'Weekly timesheet summary', 'Operative document', 'SHE alert' and 'Clock card'.  Less common or ad-hoc templates such as 'Bio-hazard checklist', 'Apprentice starter form', 'Initial visit inspection', etc can be optionally attached by either the office or the device user.
As standard, jobs created on magic5 require:
  • Customer
  • Location
  • Date
  • User (or Group)
However these can be hidden or the text changed. For example, if someone only ever works with one customer the customer name may be hidden to save clutter on the device screen.  Or for clarity in particular industries, 'Location' may be replaced by 'Project', and 'User' by 'Engineer'.
Additional items can be specified in the Job definition.  These will be any other items of information required from the office user when creating or assigning the job, and can be optional or mandatory. They can be text entry, list items, contacts, phone numbers or automatically generated and can be split into multiple pages if required.  Examples of additional items include contact person, job description, urgency, alarm code, notes (for office), notes (for user), job number and suggested equipment.
As well as input items, the job definitions have settings to define how jobs of this type are processed and displayed by the system.
Most jobs have a single template to be completed on the device when the job is opened. After completion of this form (plus any supplementary forms added while work is being carried out), the job is automatically closed.
However some jobs require a set of form templates from which the user picks as required and the job is left open until manually closed by the office.  Some 'open ended' jobs like this have a 'start of day' template that requires that a completed form is sent back on every day of the job.
Information shown in magic5 job lists can be customised, for example, the job number and urgency could be shown alongside the main job details or the customer could be hidden.  See Concepts - Job lists for more details.
Jobs can also be viewed on the graphical planner with colour coding of statuses (see Job definition - amend others for more details).
Job definition actions are automated actions or options that arise at various stages of a job’s life cycle. An action could be something like 'send an e-mail to the assigned engineer when a job is allocated' or they could be something like 'if a job is at status "awaiting invoicing" then give the user an option to mark it as invoiced'.  See Job definition - Actions & options for more details.

Templates

Templates in magic5 are used to define what data is to be collected on a mobile device form. Every implementation of magic5 needs at least one template and some systems use 50 or more.
Forms to be completed on the device can be initiated by the device user (using the “New Form” option and selecting a template) or by an office user initiating a job which has a template associated with it.  The same template can be used for either initiation.
A template consists of one (or more) documents. A document has one or more Pages of questions, a Page being simply of way of breaking up the form into manageable chunks. Each Page in turn has one or more Sections. Each Section has a heading and one or more Template Items.  See magic5 Hierarchy Explained
Template items are individual questions/answers or pieces of information to display. They can be simple Text items, Drop-down lists, Tick (check) boxes, Display information from an associated job, links to documents, options to take Photos etc.  See Item type.
Additionally the template can contain automated actions to initiate at each status.  This might be “when a form is received from the device, e-mail a PDF of the form to the customer” or something like “when a form is finished on the device, add specified items to a daily summary”.  See Template action.
Template settings control editing options for any form using that template: whether the form can be saved as incomplete and then edited, whether it can be deleted by the user, whether it can be edited on the web site after submission etc.  See Editing rules.
Forms submitted from a device are referred to as reports and can be viewed in report lists, filtered depending on their status.  These lists can be customised within the template, including additional information and overriding default display items such as the customer.  See Report lists.
The PDF and Excel report formats associated with a template are also specified through the template settings.  See Concept - PDFs and Concepts - Export to Excel
See Also