About Work Management

Work and Asset Management (WAM) application is able to support the performance of work by crews in the field through the use of activities. An activity is a task used to track changes and other actions performed in the field, such as inspections, changes to assets, or even tree trimming and, if configured, initiates a completion event to perform the appropriate change to the data in the system.

Activities are categorized into three broad classes of work:

  • Field Activity
  • Work Activity
  • Construction Work Activity

All three activity classes share the same Activity Type business object which specifies definitions, such as default service class, scheduling information, handling of errors or exceptions, completion details, and so on, for activities of that type. The uniqueness between each of the activity classes is derived from the Activity BO linked to the activity type. The Activity Type business object includes two flags, the Work Role flag and the Track Cost flag, that are hard-coded on the BO Schema and used to differentiate between the activity classes whether planning and approval is required:

  • For Field Activity, the Work Role flag is set to “No” and the Track Cost flag is set to “No”.
  • For Work Activity, the Work Role flag is set to require planning and the Track Cost flag is set to "Yes".
  • For Construction Work Activity, the Work Role flag is set to require planning and the Track Cost flag is set to "Yes".
Note: Both flags should be set to No for Operational Device Management only customers.
Note: Also note that customers that use both Operational Device Management and Work and Asset Management have the option to set the Track Cost flag for field activities only to Yes.

See Understanding Activity Types in the Admin Guide for more information.

All activities share some common details across all activity classes:

  • Unique ID: The system creates a unique number that identifies the individual activity and enables the system to track the activity details.
  • Work Location: An activity’s work location is used to describe the physical location of where the work is to be performed. This can include such information as main or sub addresses, building or room numbers, and intersections, cross streets, or a latitude and longitude. For example, a college campus might have a main address for the entire campus but the work location of the work to be done would be at a particular building on campus.
  • Schedule Details: The system looks to the Schedule Details for determining when the work is scheduled to start and end.
  • Attachments: Activities can include schematics, pictures, procedures, notations, and more, in the form of documents or attachments, to assist crew members with additional information about the work to be performed.
  • Completion Events: Completion events are used to execute the business processes resulting from the activity, such as asset updates, status transitions, and so on.

Activities also include some behaviors that are unique to the individual class of activity. See the individual activity topic for more information.