Open, track and resolve operational and maintenance issues effectively
Issues in mWater help you handle operations and maintenance by allowing users to report, track, and resolve tickets such as pipe leaks, broken water points, health facility functionality, and much more.
This guide covers how issues work, how to open and assign them, how to send updates through the App, and how to mark issues as resolved and closed. Finally, we look at how to analyze issue data in reports.
All of the publicly available issue types in
mWater are free for you to use. If you would like to
create custom issue types for your organization, please contact
info@mwater.co.
Key benefits of issues:
- Track an operational issue from start to finish
- Notify users directly in the app
- Easy analysis of the overall picture: What are common problems, how long does it take to resolve them, and so on.
Issues make it easy to analyze and map where issues need to be resolved
Summary of the issue process
1. Open - What is the issue and where is it
2. Update - Issue is not yet resolved but important information can be added
3. Resolve - When and how was the issue fixed
4. Close - Issue has been confirmed as resolved
Issues can also be Assigned to users and Reopened if a review shows them to have been inaccurately resolved. Only opening and closing issues are expected by the system. The other steps are optional and depend on your own process.
Example issue workflow:
A problem is discovered with a water point and an issue is Opened. Then
the issue is assigned to a technician who goes to fix the problem.
The
manager tracks the progress of the issue from the Portal and sees an
Update from the technician where they have diagnosed the issue and have
ordered spare parts.
Once the parts have arrived, the technician goes and fixes the water point and reports the issue as Resolved. The manager checks the resolved issue and marks it as Closed.
Opening an issue
Issues can be opened either from the mWater App or Portal by picking one out of many issue types to choose from. At this stage you should fill in necessary data to indicate where and what the issue is.
To open an issue in the app:
1) Open the +Add menu from the bottom buttons
2) Select Create an Issue
3) Choose the issue to create
4) Fill in the relevant issue details and Submit once done
The issue will then show up in the Tasks tab of the app. Once the app has synced with the server, the issue will also show up in the Portal.
Each issue type has different fields to fill in depending on what is being tracked. Many issues link to sites
in mWater, that is to say pieces of infrastructure
in the world that exist as separate points of data. With most issue
types you can either link the issue to a site, or create a new site and
then link the issue to it.
Note that custom app configs can have different settings on which issues can be created, and whether they can be created at all.
Assigning issues
mWater allows you to assign issues to users or groups of users, so that they get notified on their App with a push notification, and you can track accountability of who should be resolving the issue.
You can assign issues either in the App or the Portal. To assign an issue through the App:
1) Go to the Issues tab of your Tasks page
2) Open an issue and select Assign to Me or Assign to Other User from the top
3) Select the user, organization, or organization branch to assign the issue to
Note that you need to have an active internet connection in order to access the list of mWater users.
To assign an issue through the app, go to the Tasks page and select the Issues tab
You can choose a user or group of users to assign the issue to
3) Select the assign or reassign issue option from the top
Once you have assigned an issue, the user(s) will get a push notification on their phones.
Assigned issues show up as push notifications on the user's phone
Updating an issue
If there are relevant updates to give before the issue is resolved or closed, they can be done through the Update function. There can be any number of updates provided for a single issue as long as it is not closed. The contents of the update stage depend on the issue type.
To give an update through the App:
1) Go to the issues tab on the Tasks page
2) Select the issue you want to give an update for
When an issue has been fixed in the field, it can be Resolved. The Resolve issue step contains key information about the resolution, such as when it happened, a photo, and potentially comments. The fields of the resolution step depend on the issue type.
To resolve an issue in the app:
1) Go to the Issues tab of the Tasks page
2) Select the Issue you want to resolve
3) Click the Resolve Issue option at the bottom of the page
4) Fill in the resolution data and submit
Reopening an issue
An issue can optionally reopened if it has been resolved or closed by selecting the Reopen Issue option. This should be done when there's something unsatisfactory in the resolution step, such as inaccurate data.
Once an issue has been reopened, it can be reassigned. This process can be repeated until there is a satisfactory resolution.
Closing an issue
When an issue has been satisfactorily resolved and it should be finalized, you can Close it. This is done in the same manner as the previous steps by opening the issue and this time selecting Close Issue. Then you fill in the relevant fields of the close issue step and submit.
Analyzing issue data
Example Dashboard
Issues are their own data source in mWater. This means you can bring them to any map, dashboard, datagrid, or console you create. That way you can for example see where open issues are on a map, how long they have been open, how quickly are they being resolved, and much more. Any data you have entered in your issues you can also analyze. To put your issues on a map, you need to navigate to location data. This is most often available through the Site which is typically linked to the Open stage of the issue.
- Issues can be Watched. If you watch an issue, it will show up in your App.
- Issues can have comments. Comments will be visible to anyone who can see the issue.
- If you use a Site as the data source, you can easily see all issues that have been linked to that site over time.
- If you would like to create custom issue types for your organization, please contact info@mwater.co.
With custom issue types you can define what the Open, Update, Resolve and Close stages of the issue contain. You can then also set who gets to see the issues created in your organization. In custom issue types you can also set up custom rules for when the issue is triggered or how it gets assigned. For example you could set up a rule to automatically assign an issue created in a certain location to a specific organization branch.
