System Overview
Facility Source (FS) provides facility maintenance optimization to its Clients nationwide. We use fmPilot 1.0 & fmPilot 2.0 as a proprietary software to facilitate every aspect of our service.
Both the systems offer our Clients a one stop solution for work order Management and Asset Tracking. These systems are used by our Associates, Clients and Service Provider (SP's).
Each user has permission based access, so they have access to functions and visibility within the fmPilot systems based on their requirement.
fmPilot has two parts: 1.0 and 2.0, and usage of these depends on the SP chosen to complete the work.
fmPilot: This system is used by our Clients to create and manage work order (WO).
fsElite: This app is used to track the SP and their activities on the assigned WO.
Service Provider API
The SP API is a web service exposing a set of interfaces and targeting common needs of the SP community, building a bridge between FS fmP2 system and the SP IT proprietary systems. The SP API functionality is focused on WO Management and Invoice/Quote Management.
The three operations most requested by our SP's are WO pulling, WO updates (including WO status), and the ability to add comments or notes to WO. In each of these cases, the primary concern is to make these operations available to SP's primary systems. These are not expected to be made available to individual distributed applications where user/role security is necessary. Each action will behave as if it is being performed by a SP administrator level core system.
Work Order Pulling
The first required operation is pulling of existing WO to retrieve assigned work orders and update the existing work orders. This is an on-demand service that will respond to requests for data rather than an active push of new data, which would require SP's to construct their own services for reception. There are finite limits on the numbers of work orders that may be retrieved in a single pull to prevent any resource “hogging” by large queries.
Work Order Updates
SP frequently have a need to modify the status of a WO, and often the status has been modified within a SP’s core systems and that data simply needs to be transmitted. This may be a fulfillment of a WO, acceptance of a WO, or suspense of a WO that is awaiting materials.
Each of these statuses has its own business logic within the application itself, so this will need to be mirrored within the service to ensure that all notifications, validations and processes are followed correctly. Additionally, all status updates undergo a general validation rule prior to transition-specific validations.
Work Order Comments and Notes
As WO evolve, technicians need to apply notes either for client usage, notes to continuing technicians, and other pertinent administrative information. A service is implemented that receives and annotates these comments relative to a particular WO. Pulling for comments are also implemented.
Quote
Quote management functionality is exposed to SP through API(s) where SP can get the quotes associated with work order, create/update the quote, insert attachments to the specified quote and so on.
Invoice
Invoice management functionality is exposed to SP through API(s) where SP can get the invoice(s) associated with work order, create/update the invoice, insert attachments to the specified invoice and so on.