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Frequently Asked Questions

Below is a list of the most commonly asked questions about the Mobile FieldPro Workflow Management solution. More detailed information and hi-level walk-throughs can be found in our media section. If you do not find your specific question listed here or would like more clarification, please feel free to forward your question here...

Most Frequently Asked Questions


    Where to start...there are so many variations of software on the market today. However in general terms, different categories or similarities can be made among these varieties. For comparison purposes, we'll address these categories and also address features other solutions lack.

  • A large portion of the other solutions are web-page or web-based solutions. This is not sufficient for the enterprise level. Web pages are wireless coverage dependent, inherently slow to navigate and only allow for a limited amount of functionality (please see Is your product a web-based solution question). At Mobile FieldPro, our approach was to build a world class interface that is user-intuitive, easy to navigate, works outside of wireless coverage and is easy access critical information necessary for workflow management.
  • Some of the other workflow solutions on the market require you to migrate your accounting system to their accounting package (which is part of their workflow solution). While this may be plausible for small organizations just starting out, we wouldn't recommend it. First of all, there are so many feature-rich accounting software packages out today that offering a mandatory scaled-down accounting package doesn't make sense. What makes more sense is if the Workflow Management software could integrate with world class accounting software. That was our approach and Mobile FieldPro. We have designed our solutions to sit on top of your existing accounting software. Our Accounting Merge component has built-in connectors to merge job, time, miles and material information into your current accounting software. So if you use QuickBooks, Sage Peachtree, Timberline or Star Builder or a SQL Server, Oracle, Pervasive, or MySQL based package, or an other industry standard, Mobile FieldPro will seamlessly integrate so you have the best of both worlds.
  • Most other solutions don't seem to track job or technician status. Or if they do, it's generally only an open or closed job status. Well, you probably guessed that Mobile FieldPro tracks a lot more than that. We track 12 different job statuses. From Initiated and Assigned to Reviewed and Invoiced. All active job statuses are color-coded and easily viewable from our Dispatcher component. So, for example, your office personnel can easily tell if a job is in an Uploaded, Hold, Working or Posted status just by looking at the Open Jobs tree view. For Technician statuses, we track In-Coverage, Out-of-Coverage, and No Remote Scheduling. The coverage statuses are important for those priority service calls when your dispatcher needs to know that the technician will receive the service call immediately.
  • We offer our customers the ability to create customized maintenance and task checklists. Checklists are created for a repeatable process giving your field personnel the ability to record metrics, statuses, comments and check off steps that are performed. Checklists are created and edited from the Manager component. Once a checklist is created, you can associate it with any location, equipment or task and add it to any recurring schedule you choose (weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, annually, etc...). When the procedure comes due, your dispatcher will add this procedure to a job item and scheduled it to a field technician. The technician will see the checklist on the mobile device as part of the job item and they will be able complete the checklist form. Once Completed, the checklist is saved with the work information and can be retrieved at any time for review or reporting needs. Please see Can I create a customized maintenance checklist for more information about custom checklists.
  • We provide you with an optional web portal for your customers giving you a value-added service to your current offering. The Mobile FieldPro web portal, called the eClient, gives your customers and asset managers the ability to search service and maintenance history for locations and equipment. The eClient is customizable to reflect your brand. Also, through the Mobile FieldPro Manager component, you can control login authorizations and select which locations an eClient user can view.
  • Mobile FieldPro provides your organization with the ability to isolate separate service groups from one another. This is extremely important for large organizations that have multiple service departments or distributed service groups. From the Manager tool, you can manage each Dispatcher login and associate the specific customer, location and/or service group they are able to see and dispatch to. All the job data is maintained in the same data repository so managers will be able to view all information.
  • Our software tracks all job information at the equipment and task level. For general service, there is a miscellaneous category but for all other service and maintenance, it will be associated with equipment or a task. If a customer calls and asks what work was performed on a specific piece of equipment, the answer is 2 clicks away. If it wasn't tracked at the equipment, you wouldn't be able to search specifically what work had been performed on that equipment. Other workflow solutions on the market will only track at a customer level which will provide no way of drill-down searching at the equipment level.
  • Many workflow management solutions provide the ability to do ad-hoc reporting. The Mobile FieldPro Report Server also provides you with the ability to create condition-based reports that are automatically generated and emailed to the appropriate recipient(s). One example of this is our Maintenance not Scheduled report, for recurring scheduled maintenance items that have passed a scheduling date without being assigned, an automated report will be generated with all maintenance not scheduled and then automatically emailed to the appropriate person. Another example is our Overdue Work Items report detailing service and maintenance work items that are still open past a given due date.

    • Admittedly this has been a long winded answer to the question, however, this is our chance to give some detail into what separates the Mobile FieldPro Workflow Management platform from the rest.

    While we do use internet communication channels for data synchronization and seamless software updates, our user interfaces for the Dispatcher and field personnel interface Remote are not web-page interfaces; they are normal software applications resident on the PC or remote device. Contrast this to a large portion of the other solutions which are web-page user interface solutions. This means they are web-page interfaces you use through your browser. Web pages are inherently slow to navigate and only allow for a limited amount of functionality. But the crippling part of web-page solutions is that when the field technician is out of coverage (in a basement, center of an office building, or just outside a cell towers range), they will not be able to use the software. This is what is called Passive Workflow Management. Obviously this is a severe limitation. Our field personnel component (Remote) was built to work in and out of coverage; automatically synchronizing data when in coverage and waiting to forward data when out-of-coverage. The synchronization and coverage monitoring is automatic; your field technician doesn't have to do anything extraordinary. This is called Active Workflow Management. Perhaps for small organizations, you can make an argument in favor of a passive web platform. But for larger organizations with several locations, several technicians and several active jobs, you really need a full software application that can handle multiple user interactions with immediate responsiveness. That's what Mobile FieldPro provides.

    Once the rollout has been scheduled, it will generally take between 1 to 2 weeks to be up and running to where your organization can start scheduling job items with Mobile FieldPro. There will be some coordination involved with your staff for training availability. Other considerations include eClient, Reports, and Accounting Merge customizations. Typically items like customizations of the eClient and Reports can be done after the general installation without effecting your ability to schedule work items with Mobile FieldPro. Accounting Merge customizations can effect total setup time depending on the scope.

    In a word, yes. This is one of the items that separates Mobile FieldPro from other solutions. Using the Mobile FieldPro Manager component, you can create customized checklists and procedures for recurring maintenance, inspections and other recurring procedures. When you first create a new checklist, you have the option to import an existing checklist as a template, or start from a blank slate. Once in the New Checklist Editor, you have the ability to add check boxes for the field technician to check-off, text boxes for the field technician to enter data (for example voltage, meter readings, or a written description), and a drop-down list where the field technician needs to select one option (for example: Heating, Cooling, or Off). These custom checklists become very important to our customers for several reasons. For one, it provides a repeatable procedure for your field technicians to perform even if it isn't the same technician performing the procedure. It also provides you the ability to show your customers precisely what procedure was performed for that individual task or equipment. Each time the procedure is performed, a report detailing the completed procedure is available for you to forward to you customers. In fact, each checklist procedure is electronically stored so you can generate any report for the past or, if you use the eClient, your customer can pull up any historical checklist procedure. Another benefit we have heard from our customer feedback is that it becomes an invaluable sales tool. They show potential customers custom inspection and maintenance checklist procedures that will be filled out each inspection and will be available on-line for the asset managers to review or print. This is more then the competition can offer. To find out more about our custom checklists, please take a look at the Generate and Scheduling a Customized PM Checklist in the media section.

    All base packages include 5 support incidents per month. New customers will receive unlimited support for the first 2 months. When an issue arises, we have a support hotline number we provide you with. We also provide a customer login to fill-out an online form which will page available on-call support. Critical support calls are addressed within a 2 hour window during normal operating hours.

    With a license or subscription agreement, you will receive all updates as they are made available. The update process is designed to be as simple as possible. In fact, every time your personnel log into the Dispatcher, Manager, Remote PC, or Calendar, it first checks to see if there is a new version of the software available. If there is, a notice will popup and ask if you would like to download the new version. Click Ok and the download starts which may take a minute or so. Once downloaded, the update installs automatically and when finished, it will open the software as normal. That's it. Throughout the year, there may be 3 to 6 updates.

    At Mobile FieldPro, our main concern is that your data is secure and private. We understand that your data means everything to your business. Your customers entrust you with their information. You need a workflow management solution you can trust also. All data transfers and communications between your office and the Mobile FieldPro datacenter are encrypted. The office components are password protected and you have full control of setting up users and changing there credentials and access privileges.

    With our software solution, you have 2 options for hosting your database. You can host it yourself or we can host it at our datacenter. If you host it your self, you must have adequate bandwidth, server capacity and sufficient in-house support for the database. The main reason for this is so the workflow stays up and continues to flow. Even though all communications are redundant, if you tend to have interrupted data service, that can negatively effect the fluidity of the your workflow. Same goes for the server and database. If you are not familiar with database management, they do require some oversight with regard to disk space capacity, rate-of-growth, backups and overall server load. If you are not comfortable with this, we provide the option of hosting your database at our datacenter. If we are hosting your data, we provide daily backups, and overall management to ensure your database stays up and running.

    We sure do. With Mobile FieldPro, you can track inventory at multiple locations and vehicles. From the Manager component, you can access the Inventory tool to add and adjust inventory to as many locations and/or vehicles as necessary. There's is also a feature to have an optional automated email sent to a recipient once the inventory level has fallen below a threshold you set. When your field personnel adds an inventory item to a service or maintenance call, the quantity on-hand will be adjusted. In cases where your field personnel needs to find an inventory item, they have the ability to search from the field for inventory items by location.

    You always have the option to customize your eClient portal. Branding with your logo is included in the standard eClient package. Service and Maintenance job searches by location and equipment are also part of the standard offering. In cases where you would like to provide your customers with added functionality or report access, the first step is to discuss the feasibility and, if possible, we would provide you with a quote based on hours at competitive development rates.

    We can create customized reports based on pre-existing report our customers have had. This of course is predicated on the fact that we have or have access to the information needed for the report. Your standard logo branding is part of every report but if your customers are used to specific information or a specific layout, we will work with you to obtain a satisfactory result.

    Yes. If you supply us with a print quality logo (tiff, eps, pdf or other vector based logo), we can add it to each report. If you wish to provide your customers with the Mobile FieldPro service or maintenance reports, your logo will be on them. Same goes for the eClient. During setup, you provide us with a logo image and we will incorporate it with the eClient web portal. This really helps promote your brand to your customers.

    Yes it does. For larger organizations with multiple service location, service departments and/or distributed dispatching centers, Mobile FieldPro offers a way to isolate your customer locations and service calls. There are many different scenarios in which our customers may want to isolate their information from one dispatching location to another. The best way to explain this is to perhaps give an example of one application. Service company ABC Service has 5 different locations in 5 different states. Each service location generates and dispatches their own service and maintenance job autonomously from the other locations. There is no operational reason for a dispatcher in one location and state to see job and location information from another one of your location. With Mobile FieldPro, you can easily give each one of your customer locations a default service center. Then when you are managing the credentials of one of your dispatcher, you assign them with service centers they are allowed to dispatch and view. You can set the credentials to view one service center, multiple or all service centers - that's up to you. And even though the Dispatcher will only view and print reports for the service centers the dispatchers are allowed to see, all the information is retained in the same database so managers can analyze and retrieve reports on all the information easily.

    Another example would be Company XYZ has a HVAC service department and a Cabling department. Each department is run autonomously from each other. With Mobile FieldPro, you can easily separate the service and maintenance information so at the dispatch and review level, the job data maintains it's level of separation. Even though the job data is stored in the same data repository, it's just that you can isolate how you want it to be displayed to your office and field personnel.

    Mobile FieldPro was designed to interface with industry standard accounting software packages. Mobile FieldPro specifically manages your workflow and job life-cycle. Once the job has been completed and reviewed by office personnel, it can be promoted to your accounting software for invoicing. The Mobile FieldPro Accounting Merge tool was created to export job, time, miles and material information into your accounting software package. You can also print supporting documents like job reports to attach to an invoice.

    The Accounting Merge component of the Mobile FieldPro Workflow Suite interfaces with your existing accounting software. From the Accounting Merge tool, you can export time, miles and materials for invoicing and expense purposes. Accounting Merge can interface with QuickBooks, Sage, Timberline, Peachtree, and Oracle, SQL Server, Pervasive, MySql and MS Access based packages.

    There are a variety of reports you can access from the Mobile FieldPro suite. You can have the reports automatically generated and emailed periodically or you can run an ad-hoc report from the components themselves. The following is a list of some of the ad-hoc reports you can access:

  • Service and Maintenance Reports
  • Jobs by Status
  • Daily, Weekly and Monthly Completed Jobs
  • Open Job Reports
  • Past Due Jobs
  • Warranted Jobs
  • Equipment End-of-Life Reports
  • Equipment Specs Reports
  • Active Maintenance Schedule
  • Active Maintenance Not Scheduled Report
  • Field Personnel Comments Report
  • Field Personnel Time Sheet Reports
  • Daily Posted Time Reports
  • Daily Un-posted Time Reports
  • Regular Hours and Overtime Reports
  • Billable and Non-Billable Time Reports
  • Materials Used Reports
  • Inventory by Location Reports
  • Low Inventory Reports
  • Inventory Used Reports