Administrator Guide 2017
Concepts - Jobs

A job is simply a task to be completed.  Most magic5 tasks are carried out away from the office so many jobs relate to site visits and so have an associated a customer and location.  In addition, they are usually allocated to a specific user or group of users for completion.

As a job progresses, its status is recorded by magic5 under the four categories shown below and lists are filtered accordingly.  Additional statuses, or supplementary statuses, can be set up as bespoke items - for instance, 'Work complete' could have supplementary status values of 'Awaiting invoicing', 'Invoiced', 'Not billable' and 'Payment received'.  Movement between statuses (standard and supplementary) can be set up in the Job definition and can trigger actions such as automatic e-mails.

Colour coding can also be controlled through the job definition and this is very useful in the planner for a graphical representation of workflow.

Unallocated A job is unallocated if either it has no date or is not assigned to either a user or to a group of users. An unallocated job will not be viewable on a mobile device. On the graphical planner, unallocated jobs with typically be available for “drag and drop” onto a date/user.
Allocated or outstanding A job which is allocated ('outstanding' or 'work in progress') has been assigned to a user or group of users and has a date, but all device-related work on the job has not been completed. An allocated job will be shown on the relevant user’s device Work List., assuming that the user has run the Receive Updates option. If a job has been allocated to a group of users then it will be available on the Work List of each of the users in the group, allowing the job to be selected and completed by any of them.

Depending on the job definition, one or more forms may require completion before the device is satisfied that the job has been completed as far as the device is concerned. A job definition can also specify that a job will remain open on the device until closed on the server.

Assuming that a job is not set to remain open indefinitely, completion of forms will eventually result in the device considering all work on the job as complete. Once the final form has been sent back to the server the job is marked as complete.
Work complete A job is considered “work complete” if all device-side forms for that job have been finished and sent back to the server. In many cases there will only be one form – for example, a job sheet has been completed on the device and sent back to the server. In other cases there may be multiple forms through a set of more or less complex rules and events on the device.

A job which has been allocated to a group of users will be removed from all device Work Lists once one user has moved the job through to “Work complete” status.
Manually closed Jobs can be manually closed from the server. This can be the case with jobs which are open-ended by definition - in which case the job has to be manually closed via the server in order for it to be removed from the device Work List – or it can be the case with “in progress” jobs on the device which could potentially be finished by the user but which the office have chosen to close.
See Also