How to set up team workflows
Start with roles
Most workflow problems are role problems. Assign the minimum each person needs.
| Role | Suits | Cannot |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | The account holder — one person | — |
| Admin | Operational administrator | Manage users |
| Manager | Team or site lead | Delete assets, manage users |
| Employee | Technicians and field staff | Create assets, close work orders |
| Viewer | Read-only stakeholders — finance, leadership | See work orders, service records, or incidents |
Do not default everyone to Admin. Admin can delete assets and categories. Most people who need to "change things" are Managers.
Employee is the right role for technicians. They can update assets, complete maintenance, and check items in and out — everything needed to do the work, without being able to create or delete records.
Be careful with Viewer. Viewers cannot see work orders or service records at all, so it is the wrong role for anyone in a maintenance conversation.
Role changes take effect on the person's next request, not at their next sign-in.
The core workflows
Acquiring an asset
- Create the asset — Manager or above
- Set category, location, department, and criticality
- Enter purchase cost and date — these drive everything financial
- Attach the invoice and warranty with expiry dates
- Assign it
- Confirm it inherits a category PM rule, or attach one
Maintenance
- A fault is reported, or a PM rule falls overdue and raises a work order automatically
- A Manager assigns it
- The assignee does the work: checklist, materials, photos, notes
- The assignee completes it with resolution notes and actual time
- A Manager closes it — this is the step that writes the service record and moves the cost into reporting
Lending equipment
- Check it out with a realistic return date and a purpose
- Someone owns follow-up on approaching returns
- Check it in, inspecting the item as it comes back
End of life
- Decide using cost risk and total cost of ownership
- Dispose of it (Odyssey and above) or archive it
- History is preserved either way
Agree who owns what
Name a person, not a team, for each of these:
- Data quality — reviewing asset intelligence for gaps
- Checkout follow-up — chasing returns
- The maintenance backlog — triaging overdue work
- Compliance — watching document expiry
- User management — the Owner, in practice
Shared ownership means nobody does it.
Habits that keep records accurate
Record at the time, not at the end of the month. Costs reconstructed later are guesses.
Close work orders. Completed is not closed, and this is the single most common gap.
Log materials as materials. Parts mentioned in notes are not costed and never reach any report.
Enter zero rather than blank for warranty work. Zero proves it happened and was covered.
Set expiry dates on every document that has one.
Everyone can send feedback
The in-product feedback dialog is available to any signed-in user at any time — no eligibility rules, no cooldown, no role gate. Viewers can use it exactly like Owners.
Tell your team that. The people who notice friction are usually the ones doing the work, not the ones administering the system.
Common mistakes
Granting Admin to resolve a permission complaint. Work out which permission is actually needed.
Leaving work orders at Completed. No service record, no cost, no schedule reset.
Nobody owning follow-up. Overdue lists grow until they are ignored.
Mixing demo data with real assets. Delete demo data before the team starts.
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