RT-01 The Route Technician Application (with MonitorQA)

(0:10 - 1:30)

Hi, today's video is all about the Route Technician application. So the Route Technician application has actually grown over the last couple years with additional features and functionality added to it, depending on the requests made, you know, from the different HomeWatch IT clients. As a result, there will actually be some parts of this video that may or may not apply to you, depending upon how your admin has set up the account.

There may also be some additional videos recorded that will talk about different aspects like adding additional lines and or adding vendor bills, which will not be part of this video. Consider this video as an introduction to the Route Technician. So what is the Route Technician application? First and most important, this is going to have your route list.

This will have everything that you have to do today and all of the details behind everything that is on your list for today. So all of your work order details, all of the reports, all of your communication and issues, everything is within this one application. It's designed strictly to be used out in the field and the screen is set up to work well on phones or tablets and is really your primary tool when you're out of the office.

(1:30 - 3:48)

It also allows you to communicate directly with the admin, as well as update hours if you are doing time tracking capabilities. So this video is going to be considered an introductory video and is going to focus primarily on using the application. First off, to view your route list for the day, to see the details of the work order, and then to actually process the report from the home visit that you're going to perform.

Now the report we're going to use today is a home visit, but you may also have different templates out there for driving cars, meaning a service provider, post-storm follow-up, whatever the case may be. So they all follow the exact same process, so what you see in the video today will carry forward no matter what type of template you are using. We'll talk about how to initiate the report, how to complete the report, how to email the report, if you have the right to do so, and that may or may not be the case depending on how your admin has your system set up.

But the video will show you how it works and if it applies, you'll know how to do it. So here in the middle of the screen, I have brought up my phone and I'm logged into my Method CRM application on the phone. Since I'm an admin, I'm going to see all of the apps.

If you are a field technician, you're going to see the Route Technician app and the Issues app by default. We're going to do everything in the Route Technician app today, so we're going to click on that item and open up the Route Tech. You'll see that the first thing we see here is our route list for today's date, and here are all the different homes that we're supposed to visit today.

If you get to a particular property, you can open up that home, that information, by clicking on that line. So let's click on Mr. Blanco here. This will then open up for me the details of his work order.

So you'll see the work order number I have, the time that we expected to do it, who we're at, title. You'll see some other information here as far as phone number and address. If you click on the address, this would then open that information up for you in your Apple Maps or Google Maps program, and you can do driving directions or whatever you need to.

(3:50 - 5:00)

If it's your policy to send a text message off to the client, let them know you're on the way. You can use this link as well. Usually that would only be used if your client is actually in residence and you want to notify them that somebody's on the way.

So if you click that, it'll bring up a Below that, you'll have notification of if the client is in residence or not. Expect vendor invoice is used for the vendor bill system, and that's covered in a separate video. You then have a description of what you need to do today.

So in today's case, we're going to do a bi-weekly home visit, and we're going to pick up and process the mail. Down below, you will notice there are different informational areas. Some of these may be visible to you and some may not be, depending on how your system is configured.

You can open up these sections to get to all of the details about this particular property. Security info, you'll see I have the codes on arming and disarming the alarm system. I also know how to get into the gate into the neighborhood.

(5:01 - 7:35)

Under property notes, I have all of the different notes about how to manage the property and what to do with the different areas. If your company is using dates, you have the dates that these particular services were last performed. You can always change and update those dates to the current date by clicking this update link.

You'll also have some contact information. You'll have route technician notes where you can put notes back to your admin, as well as a photo, and you can view if there are any open issues with this particular account. Issues and route tech notes will be covered in a separate video later.

But you can see that all of that information is here available to you, and you can now act upon this particular property as necessary. When you are ready to actually do the report on the property, you have a start report button at the top of the screen. You can click the start report button, and this will bring up for you the default template as assigned by your admin.

Now you may need to change it. You may not need to change it. I would say most of the time you will accept whatever is assigned by your admin and just say start the report with this template.

Now at this point, this may have actually changed by the time you view this video, but there is a small issue. If you're running an iPhone, you won't run into this issue. And most Android devices also work.

Unfortunately, mine doesn't. What you'll notice is I hit the start report with this template, and I did receive a notification, which you can see up here in my notification bar, that shows me that a new report has been assigned to me in my monitor QA application. If you're on a device where this works properly, this would have opened up the monitor QA application for you and taken you straight to that report.

In my case, and if yours does the same, it's actually quite simple to pull down your notification. You'll see here's that notification I'm speaking about that a new audit is assigned, and you can just tap on that and it will do the same thing. It will load up the monitor QA application and take you straight to that particular report.

So it's one extra keystroke, not a big deal at this time. Then we'll come in here and we'll download the report and actually perform the report itself. I'm not going to go through the details of how to use this program because that is part of a different video.

(7:36 - 11:29)

But if I come through here and I'm just going to check everything okay on my exterior, and then I'm going to go back to my list, and I'm actually going to mark everything else as not applicable, just so that I can complete the report. Normally, of course, you wouldn't do that. You'd go through and you'd fill out all of the areas.

I'm going to go ahead and add my signature since it won't let me complete until I do. And now that I'm finished with the report, I will hit finish audit. When we do that, the system will automatically upload that information into the cloud, it'll store the report, and it will also update your method CRM system.

So at this point, we do have to go back to the previous app on an iPhone. I know you can drag down and you can slide the apps around and go back to method. On Android, you can hit the little square button twice.

And just by hitting that twice, that'll take you right back to where you were. Now, in the background, that report was uploaded and it should have updated this work order. We can see if it's updated by hitting the screen update button.

This will go out and just do a quick query to see if it's okay. And after hitting the screen update button, it redraws the screen and you'll notice that it now has turned this button green and says email or SMS the report. If your admin does all of the emails and so on from the main office, this will not pop up for you and you will not have the option to email the report.

If however, you are supposed to email the reports yourself, you can email it right from here. So you can click that green button. This will then take you to the email screen.

Well, you can view the report first if you want to, just to see what the client would see. I'm not going to for this particular tutorial. So I'm just going to say no.

And this will take me straight to my email screen. And you'll notice it's pretty filled in here for me, where the email is going, the subject. I can see the entire email that is created for me.

If you need to update this email for any reason, you know, like I can come in here and I can type, you know, that the the trees look great, the roses are blooming, whatever other information you want. Just type that information in here. And when you're ready to go, then just hit the send email button.

And that will then send out your report. If your client is set up to receive text messages, it's very similar. You'll have another little box there where the default text messages.

And you can update that if necessary. Just remember text messages must be short. And hit the send and it will go off.

So at this point, you'll notice now it says it's completed on our route. And we can continue with the other homes that are on our route list for today. So that is it as far as the route technician goes and how it interfaces with Monitor QA.

The important thing to remember is you're doing almost all of your work in your method HomeWatch IT application. Monitor QA is nothing more than a documentation tool. It's what you're going to use to do your checklist, add photos, add notes, and then at the end it all comes back to here.

So you send everything out of your HomeWatch IT method application, etc. It's all ready to go. Anyway, I hope that was a nice intro for you.

And please look for the more advanced ones coming shortly. And those will fill in some of the gaps around this. But this should give you everything you need to run your route tech app and be able to utilize it in the field.

(11:29 - 11:31)

Thank you and have a great day.