These product enhancements will be available from October 22–24, 2024, unless noted.

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Try out new providers, simplify planned maintenance, and track asset transfers or repairs with ease

We’re excited to announce powerful new tools to help you build and maintain a strong provider network, streamline your planned maintenance, and get more from your assets at every location.

Learn about all of the updates and best practices directly from our experts in the Product Release Webinar.

Highlights

• Try out new providers with built-in pilots. Find out how prospective providers perform at your locations before you decide to assign them long-term.

• Simplify your planned maintenance. See all your recurring services on a new overview page and create services with fewer clicks.

• Easily transfer assets between locations. Create work orders for providers to transfer assets between locations with Asset Validation.

• Create asset work orders more easily. When creating a work order, it’s easier than ever to link to the correct asset.

Additional updates

• See provider profiles, reports, and templates adapted for your region

• See up-to-date information on upcoming planned maintenance

• Review invoice line-item amounts from the list view

• Multi-level sorting of work order, invoice, and proposal lists

• Track and bulk update projected completion dates 

• Quickly see if a provider is using ServiceChannel with Provider Search

• Control material markup on proposal line items

• Add multi-select questions to checklists

• Pin work order notes to the top of the list

• Add a note when resolving a required action

• Improved email formatting

• Define provider overrides with reserved rank labels

Try out new providers with built-in pilots

Continuously testing new providers is a key component of the Framework for a Strong Provider Network, which ensures business continuity by helping you achieve the right mix of the highest quality and most cost-effective providers in the market.

A powerful new “pilot” feature in Locations & Assignments automates the trial process. Easily add new providers temporarily, without changing your existing assignments. This allows you to ensure they deliver better service and meet your performance standards before you decide to rank them as your primary provider.

Just set the number of work orders the new provider should receive during the pilot (we recommend a minimum of 10 work orders within 3 months). They’ll be automatically assigned during that period, so you don’t need to manually change your assignments before and after each test.

• Find out how much you can improve. Everyone wants to find cost savings opportunities. At the same time, new providers need to learn your business, deliver better results, and meet all your expectations. With pilots, you can prove that a new provider gives you better service before giving them the job longer-term.

• Flexibly test out new providers. If a pilot provider meets or exceeds your expectations, you can rank them as your new primary. If not, your assignments automatically return to your existing primary provider when the pilot ends. You can easily continue to test until you find the right fit.

• Adapt quickly to changing business needs or market conditions. Pilots make it easy to test multiple providers continuously and adjust your mix without impacting your ongoing operations.

How to test a new provider with a pilot (available November 7, 2024):

1. Go to Menu > Location & Assignments > Pilot > Create Pilot to set up a provider pilot.

2. Select the provider, trades, number of work orders, and locations included in the pilot.

3. Enter any email addresses that should receive a notification when the pilot is completed.

4. Analyze the provider’s performance during the pilot period and decide whether to permanently assign the provider.

5. Click the Assign button to rank the provider at your locations.

This feature is coming soon on November 7, 2024.

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Select the locations where you want to test a new provider during the pilot.

Simplify your planned maintenance

From pest control to fire and life safety, an effective planned maintenance (PM) program is critical to deliver on your customer expectations. To make this easier than ever, we released the new Planned Maintenance module in July 2024. You can start using the new module upon request or wait until it is enabled for all customers in early 2025.

• See all your PM services on one page. The redesigned Planned Maintenance module gives you a simpler and more intuitive experience, starting with a holistic view of your entire PM program on the new overview page.

• Create services with fewer clicks. The streamlined workflow for creating and editing planned maintenance services ensures that nothing stands in the way of your proactive facilities strategy. 

• Reuse past upload templates to save time. We refreshed the templates page to make it easier to bulk upload work orders and reuse previous templates.

To get started, ask your Customer Success Manager or Support to enable the new module. Then go to Menu > Planned Maintenance to see the new look and feel.

Easily transfer assets between locations

The Asset Validation module helps you capture any missing information and verify the quality of your data on a regular basis across all your locations, so you can make proactive replacement decisions.

Now with Asset Validation you can create a work order to transfer assets between locations with the help of your providers, then track all the transfers on the asset summary report.

• Maintain an accurate asset register. Use Asset Validation to capture the service history, condition, and cost insights you need for capital planning to maximize your ROI.

• Get help from your providers. Technicians collect asset information with every work order so you avoid stagnant data or repeated audits. Now you can also create work orders to transfer assets between locations, so you can always track their movements.

• Justify your investments. With validated data on all your assets, you can proactively replace those at the end of their useful life to reduce downtime, revenue loss, and wasted expenses.

To get started:

1. Go to Menu > Assets Manager > Summary > Transfer

2. Click the Schedule button to schedule an asset transfer

3. You can also schedule an asset transfer from the location dashboard

If you’re not using the Asset Validation module, contact your Account Manager or Customer Success Manager to learn more.

Create asset work orders more easily

For work orders related to a specific asset, attaching the correct asset record ensures accurate data, gives you faster resolution times, and enables proactive repair vs. replace decisions. With new logic for creating asset work orders, that’s easier than ever.

You can now select from all the assets with an assigned trade that matches the work order trade. To filter the list of assets, you can select the desired asset type from a menu.

You can also enable an “Asset Not Listed” option, giving you the flexibility to create work orders without linking an asset in situations where the correct asset cannot be identified.

To get started, please work with your Customer Success Manager. 

See provider profiles, reports, and templates adapted for your region

We continue to enhance the Platform to meet the unique needs of users around the world.

To simplify the onboarding process for international providers, we have updated the registration flow and profile format. Fields like phone number, taxation information, and address fields will adapt to country-specific needs, providing a more seamless experience for our international customers and their providers.

Also, reports and templates will now automatically adjust to use currency and decimal formats specific to your region, making them easier for you to use and more accurate.

See up-to-date information on upcoming planned maintenance

The PM Upcoming report now refreshes your future planned maintenance work orders every four hours rather than weekly, so you're always working with the latest information. 

To get started, go to Menu > Analytics to review the PM Upcoming report.

Review invoice line-item amounts from the list view

Rather than opening every invoice, you can now simply hover over the invoice total amount in list view to see all the line item amounts, so you can review and take action faster.

To get started, hover over the total amount on an invoice in list view. 

Multi-level sorting of work order, invoice, and proposal lists

You can now layer multiple levels of sorting when viewing work order, invoice, and proposal lists, making it easier than ever to find the items you need and prioritize your tasks. For example, you could sort first by the provider and then by the invoice date.

To get started, click on the sort menu at the top of a list and select Custom Sort.

Track and bulk update projected completion dates 

When creating work orders in bulk, you can now include projected completion dates in the Planned Maintenance template. This helps manage expectations around work order completion dates, which is helpful for project management, stakeholder communication, and internal auditing.

You can report on the current projected completion date using the All Calls (Long Format) Report from the work orders list, and with Analytics and Data Direct, you can also report on the history of the projected completion date field. 

To get started, go to Menu > Planned Maintenance > Templates, then create a new template file and include the Projected Completion Date field.

Quickly see if a provider is using ServiceChannel with Provider Search

Now when you search for a provider by name, you can quickly verify they’re on the ServiceChannel Platform and invite them into your network without viewing their performance history. 

You can still choose to view the provider’s performance history to see if they fit your needs before inviting them into your network. Providers agree to pay a small growth fee on invoices, if they accept your invitation after you’ve reviewed their performance history.

To get started, click on Provider Search in the top navigation menu. If the link is not visible, contact your ServiceChannel administrator for access.

This feature is coming soon on November 7, 2024.

Control material markup on proposal line items

Previously, material markup rates could be automatically populated from Compliance Manager when a provider was creating a proposal. Now you can take more control over your proposal pricing with new flexibility for how these default markup rates are applied. You can enable your providers to remove the default markup rates or edit them as needed, giving you more accurate quotes.

Contact your Customer Success Manager to enable this feature.

Add multi-select questions to checklists

You can now configure checklist questions to accept multiple answers, allowing for more nuanced data collection in cases where one answer may not be sufficient. For example, a technician performing maintenance on an asset could select multiple issues that need to be addressed in future visits. This ensures that no detail gets missed and gives you a more complete understanding of onsite conditions.

To get started, navigate to Admin > Checklists to edit existing checklists or add multi-select options to a new checklist. 

Pin work order notes to the top of the list

You and your providers can now “pin” important work order notes so they appear at the top of the list for easy reference. For example, you can pin a status update so that others don’t have to read through all the notes to find out what’s happening. You can pin a note while creating it or after it’s been created. Your providers can see your pinned notes, but they cannot pin notes themselves.

Add a note when resolving a required action

When you click Resolve & Add Note on a work order note with the Action Required status, you are now prompted to add another note with your resolution. The original note’s status is updated to Action Resolved.

To get started, click on My Action Required Notes from your landing page.

Improved email formatting

Previously, it was easy for providers to miss your invitation or compliance emails because they blended in with all the work order emails sent from ServiceChannel. Now emails sent through Fixxbook workflows for invitation, registration, and compliance management will show the sender as your company name, making them easier to recognize. This leads to faster provider onboarding and easier compliance management for you and your providers.

Define provider overrides with reserved rank labels

Now you can define provider overrides to route work orders based on reserved rank labels rather than rank numbers, giving you more flexibility to adjust your assignments without disrupting overrides.

On the location dashboard override settings, you can now select a rank label rather than a number. In the issue list, you can now enter a rank label rather than a number in the "ProviderRankOverrides" column of the Fields tab.

You can reserve ranks by specifying the label for each rank number, with options including: Warranty, Landlord, Internal, Parts Order, CapEx, Government, Deferred Service, and Planned Maintenance.

To assign rank labels, go to menu > Locations & Provider Assignments > and click on Reserved Ranks.

* Provider Search and network opportunities are available in the U.S. only and will be visible if the Provider Search feature is enabled in your account.