Service Job Groups

To view Service Manager Job Groups go to the Service Manager area and from the Service Manager menu select View|Job Group.

A 'Job Group' is a set of related job cards. A new job card joins a group when an 'add with copy' option is selected when copying from another job card. Job Groups are useful when you wish to view job cards in your system that relate to the same job or customer. This is best illustrated with examples.

Job Groups Explained

Let's say your business conducts field service on washing machines. A new customer contacts you for service so since this is the first contact with this customer, the customer's name, address and other relevant details are entered into a job card from scratch. In this case you would simply go into the Service Manager, press the Add button, and begin entering information.

Now, let's say a year goes by and the same customer contacts you again. The customer may not be sure if they have used your services before. After a quick search on the customer's details, you locate the customer's job card and have it on screen before you. At this point, since you want to group the old job card with the new job card you are about to create, you press either Shift-Add or select File|Add with Copy from the Service Manager menu. After doing this you are presented with a number of different copy options for transferring details from the existing job card (the customer's old job card) onto your new job card. Selecting any option from the list of choices will automatically associate the currently selected job card with the new job card you are about to create. After pressing the Copy button, the new job card will join the previous job card as part of the same group.

If you had unticked the Add To Job Group selection, then the job card you were about to create would not be added to the group of the selected job card.

Let's now imagine that a month later the same customer rings back, reporting that their recently fixed washing machine has broken down again. Depending on the problem, the repair may or may not be covered by your service warranty. The thing to do at this point is to review the entire service history of the item and customer, in order to determine the most appropriate course of action. At this stage, all we need do is locate any one of the customer's previous job cards. We don't need to worry about finding the oldest or the latest at this point. Any job card that exists in the system for this customer will do.

Once you have found a matching job card, select from the Service Manager menu View|Job Group. The system will then list all job cards that form part of the same group (those from the same customer that have been copied from previous existing job cards), listed from the latest in the system back to the earliest.

Remember: a job card joins a Job Group when 'add with copy' is selected. The newly created job card in this case will become a member of the same group that the new card is copied from. Job Groups are useful when performing field service, because customers may be cash or C.O.D. In these situations you may not have opened a separate account for each customer. Job Groups allow you link job cards together even when jobs relate to different customers who share the same general purpose account (billing) code.

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