As a field service company, you want to easily manage your day-to-day operations. Look no further! Connecteam is a one-stop solution for all Field Service Operations.
We got it figured out 🤩
Leaning on our experience working with hundreds of Field Service companies - this tutorial will guide you step-by-step to get you to Operational Excellence!
After reading this article you should be able to:
Operations Hub: Track your service hours & schedule your appointments.
Communications Hub: Create team chats & publish engaging updates.
Hr & Skills Hub: Collect documents & set up onboarding materials.
👪 Users & Smart groups:
Smart groups are the best way to segment your employees by qualification, team, department, or even the locations they work at and sort them into relevant groups.
Custom fields: Start by creating a drop-down custom field for 'Qualification' and add the different qualifications you need (Residential Services, Commercial Services, etc).
Add users: If you have many users, you can import them in bulk. Simply download the excel template (the 'Qualification' custom field will appear there as a column).
Sort users: Create a smart group for each qualification type. Grouping them now will help us later on with scheduling correctly (and much more).
📆 Operations Hub:
Job Scheduler: publish your services with ease
The Job Scheduler makes it effortless to publish shifts for your employees and provides them with all the info they need right in their mobile app, such as: client location, repair/installation notes, attached files, and more.
Only 3 things to know to get started:
1. Jobs:
The first thing you will want to do is set up your jobs. "Jobs" in Connecteam are an information layer that you track time for. Field Service companies typically use the services they provide (Installation, Repair, Inspection, etc.) or their clients as the jobs.
2. Unavailability for work:
Probably the most important ability is to understand which of your employees are able to work or not at any given time. Through the mobile application (example below), your employees can let you know if they are unable to work and include a note explaining why. The action will have a visual indication of your schedule, giving you an easy way of understanding who can be scheduled and who cannot.
3. Creating Open Shifts:
Publish Claimable Open Shifts with Admin approval. Users' requests to claim a shift will be visible and pending approval. Field Service companies that utilize contractors tend to need to post open shifts for them.
Time Clock: track your employees' hours
With the Time Clock, you can monitor and track your team's working hours while making sure they are at the right place at the right time.
Only 3 things to know to get started:
1. Jobs:
Same as your Job Schedule, these could be either the client, location, or the service itself. Note that if your Job Schedule and Time Clock are synced, the jobs will sync over so there is no need to create new jobs in each feature!
2. Geolocation/Geo-Fences:
By enabling Geolocation, you can collect your employees’ GPS stamps when they clock in or out of shifts. This will ensure that they are not clocking in on the go and that all hours tracked are accurate. However, if you want to ensure that your employees are clocking in at the client's location without having to constantly check the location stamps, Geo-Fences are the way to go!
Geofencing is an advanced capability that allows you to create a geographic "fence" around a site or an address and have it associated with a job. In other words, to clock into that job, users must be within that specific fence or else the job will not appear for them to clock into.
3. Job Insights:
By utilizing Job Insights you can see how your hours are spent for each specific job, whether it’s a client or a service. This will also allow you to generate a PDF with a breakdown of those hours, that you can forward for billing purposes.
Forms: create digital reports and checklists for your employees to fill out
Forms are an amazingly customizable feature that is loved by our clients in all industries. You can create as many forms as you want from scratch or use one of our ready-made templates. All submissions can be exported into either excel or PDF and shared with relevant stakeholders!
Below are some form examples that Field Service companies use:
End of Job Report - Keep your standards high with a quality assurance report. Where all employees that complete a job must upload before-and-after pictures, write details about the job, and even sign it at the end.
Incident Report - Whenever an incident occurs, it’s important to capture the information as soon as possible. Connecteam allows your employees to easily record the incident, upload images if needed, sign the report and share it with the relevant stakeholders.
Supply Order Form - Give your employees a way to easily log what supplies they need for the coming week/month and order something that you are running low on.
☎️ Communications Hub:
Chat: improve your team's communication
Our Chat feature is the best place for your daily communications. With the chat, you can communicate with multiple field workers at once by having a 1-to-1 conversation or creating a group chat. Receive real-time updates, images, and more. Say goodbye to the chaotic messages and group chats going on in a million different places! Everything you need, we have.
Only 3 things to know to get started:
One-on-One chats - This will allow direct communication with a specific employee.
Team chats - These will allow you to create specific team chats for your employees to communicate with one another. The team chats can be based on their actual location, the facility that they tend to work at, or the role and service they provide. Team chats are a proven way to keep your team engaged and motivated, not to mention connected to the bigger picture.
Channels - This is a one-way communication channel where you decide who can write in and who is simply a “Viewer”. Keep important threads up top, and prevent chatter.
Knowledge Base: centralize all service-related processes in one place
No longer do your employees need to search multiple places to gather the information they need to do their job or ensure that they are complying with your company's rules. Everything they need can now be in one place and easily accessible anywhere on the mobile device. Whether it be instruction manuals for installation or safety procedure guides.
With the Knowledge Base, easily manage and connect your employees with information by creating custom libraries for policies, manuals, processes, and more.
✏️ Hr & Skills Hub:
Documents: track employees' documents in one place
Whether it's a certification or a new employee hire form, all the documents pertaining to your entire company can be found directly in the Documents tab. Now you can easily oversee all the documents your employees need to have in order to work.
Only 2 things to know to get started:
How to add a document:
The first thing you'll want to do is add documents into packs! Use this simple tutorial which will guide you step-by-step.How do Documents look for users in the mobile app?
Employees can access and upload their documents in the mobile app. Simply head to the Profile tab, employee documents, and then submit or access the necessary documents.
Courses: create digital training courses
The Courses feature allows you to create customized digital courses which your employees can complete straight from their mobile phones. You can standardize the onboarding process for all new hires within your company or even a good refresher for your more senior members.
Only 2 things to know to get started:
The options are endless: whether you're looking to create training materials, "read and sign" documents, an employee knowledge base, or simplify the onboarding process, it can all be done with this simple guide.
How to complete a Course: easily show your employees how to complete a course on the mobile app (or desktop) with this simple guide.
We're in this together! 🙏🏻 Our LIVE support team (at the bottom right corner of your screen) replies in under 5 mins to ANY question.