Flow Playbook – FSI

Many of these can be used in conjunction with Escalation rules and/or Zone Assignments to make sure that the correct people get assigned and alerted. Keep in mind that these examples are using fields that may be different to those used in your organization. For instance, statuses are often specific to the workflow you have set up in your facility. These may give you some ideas for different options to explore in the efficiency of your workflows!

Claiming a Work Order
Our first example is to give technicians an easy way to "claim" a work order that is assigned to a whole team of people.

The first step is to remove all assignments that are currently on the work order followed by a second step of adding the current user.
Next you can add a step to change the status of the work order (perhaps from Pending to Active - In Progress).
To make it even easier for your technician you may want to also change the Acknowledged Date field to have an offset of 0 days (which will fill in the current date when they activate the flow.)
Maybe you also want to add a comment for them that says "This work order has been claimed and work will begin immediately."

Asset Unable to Locate
The next example is a cross-module workflow that can help when a work order generates for an asset but the asset can’t be located.

First, you can create a child work order to make sure the asset gets looked for again
Next, change the Asset Status field to Active – Unable to locate.
You can then add a note to the Work Order that says “Couldn’t locate Asset, will look for during next cycle”
Now you can add a step to change the Work Order Status field to Closed – Could not locate
At this point you can add a message that says, Remember to edit the child work order to reflect the needs for continuing to look for the asset.
You could also create a new flow for when you go to edit the child work order to set up some defaults – like Date Needed – offset by 1 month, Status – Active – trying to locate, and maybe a note that this was previously unable to locate, and an assignment for who you’d like to search for the asset!)

Work Order Approval
Another use case is Work Order Approvals for managers who really don’t need or want access to edit work orders, but need to approve work or labor as part of an organization’s workflow. This is also a good example of using other CMS automations in conjunction with a Flow.

Step 1 would be to change the Work Order Status to Pending – Approval needed. This may then trigger an Approval type Email Response that is configured for that status change.
Next, the assignment of the approver would be added to the work order so that it can be easily tracked in their queue.
A comment could be added that says “Before work can be performed this needs manager approval”

At this point, a second Flow can be configured that is for the approver’s role. We’ll call it Approve Work.

The first step of this approver’s flow would be to remove the current user from the work order.
Next, the work order status can be changed to Active – Approved.
A comment can be added to say – Work approved, please proceed.
The Available Date field can then be changed to put in an offset of 0 days to indicate the work is ready to begin.

Work Quality Assurance
I’m a new tech and I need the lead to review what I’ve done prior to marking it complete. Use this in conjunction with an email response triggered by the status change to make sure the correct people receive an alert for this.

First step will be to assign the QA manager to the work order
Next, change the status to Work Complete – QA review requested
Add a comment that says, technician has completed work, please review for QA purposes
Save and Close work order

Work not handled by this department
Sometimes work gets requested for a department that doesn’t handle that type of work (fixing TV’s in patient rooms for example, may need to be IT as opposed to Facilities or Biomed). This can be used in conjunction with email responses to send an email to the requester with the info.

Add a Confirmation message that says – “This action will cancel this request and alert the requester, are you sure this work is not handled by our department?”
Next step is to change work order status to Complete – Cancelled
Then add completion comments of “Thank you for submitting your request. Unfortunately this department does not handle this type of request, please contact the IT department.”
Save and close work order.

Multi-trade work
When a common kind of problem needs to be addressed by multiple trades to complete a request (pipe leak with drywall or ceiling repair)

Remove me as an assignment
Change trade from Plumbing to Carpenter/Construction
Change status to Active – additional trade work needed
Add note that says “We have completed the plumbing repair and are handing off work to additional trade for completion of request.”

New Assets
If you are creating a new asset, some fields can be set in a more automated way to speed your process once the initial fields of an asset are created and saved.

In an Asset Flow button, set asset status to Active
Set warranty start date to dynamic – offset of 0 days
Set warranty start date to dynamic – offset of 365 days
Set installation date to dynamic – offset of 0 days
Set Condition Assessment to – 1 - Excellent
Add a note that says, please use the Add work order button in the Work Order history portal to create a preliminary test of this new asset and verify that there are no missing procedures for this asset in the Procedure portal of the asset edit page.

Messaging without status changes
Email responses can be automatically generated based on a status change to a work order or asset, but if you have a work flow that doesn’t initiate a status change in order to keep open work order status for instance, but still want an email to go out, maybe as a reminder that the work order is still active, you can set up this flow. (As soon as email action is released in December)

Add comment that work order still open, need more information
Set an action to send email to Requester and Assignees
Set an action to trigger a configured Email Response (will use the configured settings for that email response)

Adding new Asset that is frequently added in large quantities.
Sometimes assets of the same kind are added frequently, in large numbers. This Flow can help your users more efficiently, accurately, and consistently manage creation of those assets. This would be used in conjunction with the duplicate function within assets, so you create your first asset of that kind (maybe running the New Asset Flow mentioned above) and fill out all appropriate fields. Then click duplicate, then click on this flow action.

Since you are working from a duplicate asset, the first steps are to clear out data that will not be the same from asset to asset, such as the Device ID#, MAC address, RFID Tag #, and Machine Number.
Next step you can set up a message stating that the user needs to fill in those fields that are unique to the device.

Typical EVS room turnover
This flow can automate an EVS department’s room cleaning and turnover process with less clicks.

Change Date acknowledged to dynamic with offset of 0 days
If your rooms are set up as Assets, change the Asset status to Clean – ready for inspection
Change status to Complete – ready for inspection
Add comment – room cleaned, all points inspected
Send an email to all assignees (assuming a department contact or leader is assigned as part of your work flow) that cleaning is completed.
Save and close work order.

Dispatching made easier
If you have a central dispatching that routes work orders to the correct trades and departments, you could setup several flows for them depending on the trade that needs to get the work assigned. Here we’ll set up the Plumbing trade path. This can then be repeated for other trades.

Set the trade to Plumbing (we’ll start here with work orders specific to plumbing needs)
Set the status to Pending – Plumbing Trade work (this could then kick off a zone assignment for whatever plumbing technicians are working at that time)
Add a comment that says “Dispatched to Plumbers for work to be performed”
Email requester to let them know it’s been dispatched.
Save and close work order.
Now you can set up the same thing for each trade you want handled in this way and the dispatcher will see the different options in their Flow button dropdown.

Alternate and Addition to Zone Assigning
Zone assignments are a powerful feature that automatically assigns certain users based on certain criteria. Background Flows introduce a new way to set up an auto-assignment based on many other field changes. In addition to the zone assignment fields (location, priority, trade, and category) that can be used to trigger assignments but also rely on a status change for the assignment to happen, now you can use many other work order fields to make that change. In the following Flow we will set up an automatic assignment based on the needed by date of a work order being soon.

Set up a background triggered work order flow by choosing either Create or Update depending on whether you want it to run on new work orders or edited work orders (if you want it on both you will need to create two flows with the same steps and just the other trigger.)
Let’s say you want the flow to trigger based on a very near needed by date – choose the Field of Needed By Date and select Dynamic Date button.
Set the modifier to Is Before and then in the Offset type in 7 and choose Days for the Period field.
Now move to the Action part of the flow – set the Action to Add Assignment and choose your user(s) that perform your high priority work orders, or maybe the manager that dispatches the work to others.
Now when a work order is updated to have a needed by date that is within 7 days of whatever the current day is that work order will get routed to the assignees you selected.
This can also be used in conjunction with the zone assignment shift setting by setting the action to change fields to match what you have set in the zone assignment so that depending on the shift schedule you have set up it can get routed to whoever is on-duty at that point.
Routing work based on Requester Email
If you have specific requests that need to get handled based on who requests the work (let’s say your safety manager puts in certain requests through an online request page) and it needs to get routed to certain team members to make sure it gets handled a certain way, you can auto assign the work orders that get created by that safety manager to certain people.
Set up a background triggered work order flow by choosing Create for your trigger
Set the Field condition to Requestor email and set the modifier to Is and type in the email address of the Safety Manager in the Value field.
Then set the Action to Add Assignment and select the users who should be assigned to any work orders that are input by that user and have that email address set for the requestor email.
Staying on top of Billable work
If certain work order categories are always billable, a Flow can be set up to make sure that the billable field is always set, even if user forget to make that change.
Set up a background triggered work flow by choosing Create for your trigger
Set the Field condition to Category, the Modifier to Is and then choose your Category that should always be set to Billable.
If you have multiple Categories you can add additional modifiers to cover the categories you want to include by clicking the plus button next to the modifier.
Now set the Action to Change Field and select your Billable Status field. Select the Billable Status you want those work orders to be set to.
Every time a work order is created with those categories the system will now make sure that the billable status field is set correctly. You can also set it up to cover work orders that are updated to those statuses by creating a flow that has the Update for the trigger and setting the same steps.

New Roof warranty management
One thing facilities need to constantly manage is work that should be done under warranty, but it isn’t always something as specific as a particular asset. One great example of this is if you get a new roof and there is a multi-year warranty for that roof. If any work orders come in on the floor below that roof for leaks, you may need to manage that differently.

Set up a background triggered work flow by choosing Create for your trigger
Set the Field condition to Location, the Modifier to Is and then choose your top floor (and maybe and an OR condition for the Roof if you want to catch work orders there too)
Add an additional Field condition (AND) for a common problem of Leak
Now set the Action to Change Field and select Priority and set to High
Add an additional action to assign to the user who is responsible for contacting the roofing vendor. Maybe change the status to – Warranty Work to be performed.
Now when a work order is created for a leak on those floors it will be routed to the correct people and won’t get queued up for being worked on by technicians who shouldn’t be working on it.

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