Maintenance Surveys

Maintenance surveys help companies collect ad-hoc data and manage processes. A survey consists of a set of questions presented to Maintenance or Service technicians during their work.

The surveys can be used in both Mobile Work Order and Technician Portals.

Defining a Survey

A survey is defined by an ID and a Name and can be valid for a specified period. The Description, Introduction Text, and Ending Text are optional. The Introduction Text and Ending Text can be configured as mandatory for display when triggered, using the toggles in the header.

If there are multiple surveys valid for the same workflow type, surveys are opened according to the Rank given. The survey with the lowest Rank is triggered first.
Note :  Only three surveys can be started by a single trigger point (e.g. Work Start). If more than three surveys are defined for the same Workflow action, the ones with lower ranks will not be displayed.

The Workflow Type specifies the event or the work process the survey should be triggered. Surveys are supported for the following workflow types.

• Work assignment statuses ( Accept / Travel / Waiting at Location / Work Start / Cancel / Pause / Pending Completion / Completed Before / Completed After / Incomplete ) : These include various status events such as Accept, Travel, Waiting at Location, Work Start, Cancel, Pause, Pending Completion, Completed Before, Completed After, and Incomplete.
• Work Assignment : These can be used for work assignment specific surveys that are not linked to any event and can be answered any time during work execution. These surveys are available under the list of work actions
• New Work / New Task : These surveys are triggered when new work (i.e., New Work Order, New Service Request, or New Task) is registered in the mobile client.
• Person Resource : These surveys are used to collect information from each individual technician. The technicians can answer it at any time. These surveys are linked to the person resource and can be accessed from the eForms tile on the Home page.
• Object Information : These surveys are connected to the given object and available from the object actions page.
• Configured workflow : These surveys can be linked to an Action in the Action Flow of a workflow configuration of type Configured Work Task. It can be set for eForms action and state events defined in the Actions Flow. These type of Surveys are only supported in the MWO app.
• Child Survey : A child survey can be included in a survey and is triggered from its parent survey.
• Resource Start Shift / Resource End Shift : These type of surveys are triggered when a technician starts or finishes their shift respectively. These are only supported in the MWO app.

Additionally, the following options can be used to configure the behavior of a survey.

• Always Start New : Select this option If you want the survey to start from the beginning when answering again.
• Answer Once: Select this option if you want the survey to be answered only once
• Temp Save: Select this option if you want to save the answers as they are being answered. Even if the survey is not completed fully, the answers will be retained, and the technician can continue to fill in the rest later.
  The Suspend button will be enabled in the survey and the technician can pause and continue later. This option is only available in MWO.
• Auto Save: Select this option if you want the answers entered already to be filled in automatically while running through the survey for the second time. The user is presented with a prompt to automatically continue.
  If Yes is selected, all previous answers for the survey are displayed automatically and stop at the last answered question. If No is selected, the survey starts from the beginning and saved answers are presented to the user.
  The technician can then make any necessary changes to the previous answers and move on with one question at a time. This option is only available in MWO.
• Loop Survey / Loop Text : Select the Loop Survey option if you want the survey to be repeated more than once. The Loop Text defined is displayed before starting each loop and the user gets the option to decide if he wants to repeat the survey or to terminate it. This option is only available in MWO. Note: If Loop Survey is suspended after more than one iteration and subsequently restarted, only the last run of the loop is available to the user.

Defining Survey Questions

When defining a maintenance survey, it is possible to specify the question types together with the order they should be posted and the dependencies that may exist between these questions.

The following types of questions are supported.

• Yes/No : The answer to this type of question would be either Yes and/or No. It is possible to request to enter a Remark if the answer is Yes or No. Based on the answer given, there is an option to convert this to a terminating question.
  If the answer given for the Termination Question field is matched, the survey will end after this question. Terminated Survey in this instance is considered as completed and if it is connected to a status change, it will go ahead as normal.
• Multi Choice : For this type of questions, the user gets a set of answers to choose from a predefined list of answers. These answer options are defined in Survey Basic Data\Answer Options with the number of alternatives to select.
• Open-ended : This allows entering a free text as the answer.
• Numerical : This allows entering a number as the answer.
• Statement : This type of question can be used to share some information with the user before or after presenting a certain question.
• Picture : This allows attaching an image to the answer.
• Signature : This allows entering an electronic signature as the answer.
• Survey : It is possible to link questions in another survey by using a question of type Survey. The child survey must be defined with Workflow Type - Child Survey and must be in published status.
  The child survey ID is defined in Connect Survey field.
• Date / Time / Date Time : This allows entering a date, time or date and time as the answer respectively.

It is possible to suggest an answer for a particular question for questions of type Yes/No, Multi Choice, Open–ended and Numerical. If a question is optional to answer, the Optional flag can be set on those questions.

Some questions can be triggered based on the response to a previous question. For such questions, questions of type Yes/No or Multi Choice can be given as the Qualifying Question with the Qualifying Answer.

To help prevent user errors, the user can be forced to enter the same answer twice by selecting the Confirm Answer option. This option is available for Open-ended and Numerical type questions.

 Input Mask : It is possible to link an Input Mask for the questions of type Open-ended. This forces the technician to enter the answer in the format that is defined in the mask. The input masks are defined in the Survey Basic Data\Survey Input Masks page. You can use the following formats when defining Input Masks.

• % : Any Alphanumeric character
• _ (underscore) : Text
• # : Numbers
• Numbers 0 to 9 are considered as numbers. The same number is displayed in the Survey answer and cannot be changed.
• Letters A to Z are considered as letters. The same letter is displayed in the Survey answer and cannot be changed.
• Any character other  than %, _ and # is considered as a symbol. The same character is displayed in the Survey answer and cannot be changed.

Here are some examples of Input Masks.

• %_#
• AB%__##%10
• AB-%__##%25/VB-##
• 25%_%##%NC%24%##%10MN

The questions are presented to the user according to the order given in the survey. The order of the questions can be changed using the Move Up or Move Down buttons.

Once the survey is defined, it can be approved and published. If any modifications are needed, use the Replan button to make the required changes. Only published surveys can be used in a Workflow Configuration.

Limitations : The combination of Loop Child Surveys and Qualifying Questions may not work as expected in all scenarios, potentially causing incorrect Survey flow. To avoid these issues, it is recommended to either avoid these features together or limit the use of Loop Child Surveys.
If you require both Loop Child Surveys and Qualifying Questions in your survey flow, consider alternative configurations or consult with support for assistance in designing a more reliable survey structure.

The limitations include the following:

• A Child Survey cannot be the first question of a survey.
• A Loop Child Survey cannot be the last question of a survey.
• A Loop Child Survey cannot have a Qualifying Question as the last question.
• A dependent question cannot appear immediately after a loop survey.

Integration with Workflow Configuration  

The following survey types can be connected to a Workflow Configuration:

Workflow Configuration Type	Subtype	Workflow Type of the eForm
Person Resource	n/a	Person Resource / Resource Start Shift / Resource End Shift
Object	n/a	Object Information
Request Task / Work Task	New or Additional Work	New Work / New Task
Request Task / Work Task / Configured Request Task / Configured Work Task	Standard /Bundle Task	Accept / Travel/Waiting at Location / Work Start / Cancel / Pause / Pending Completion / Completed-Before / Completed-After / Incomplete / Work Assignment Note : For Workflow Configuration Types Configured Work Task and Configured Request Task, only the surveys of workflow type Configured Workflow can be connected to an action in the Actions Flow tab. These must first be registered under the eForms tab. It is possible to add multiple eForms for an action. Surveys connected to the Workflow action EFORMS are listed under eForms action in mobile. See Note for more information.

Workflow Configurations to which a survey is connected are listed in Used In tab of Survey page.

Survey answers

Survey Answers can be viewed on the Mobile Maintenance/Maintenance Survey/Survey Answers page in IFS Cloud Web.

A Picture attached as an answer to a question can be viewed in the Attachment Panel on that question.

A thumbnail of a signature is displayed on the survey answer record. Use Show Signature option to view this signature.

If the same survey has been answered multiple times by the same person, each answer set is saved with a different Answer Set number.

Survey answers can be also viewed in Surveys and Answers tab in Service Management/Request Management/Task Handling/Request Work Task and Service Management/Request Management/Request Handling/Request Details. In Service Request Task it is possible to view answers pertaining to this specific Service Request Task whereas in Service Request a user can see Survey Answers for all Tasks created for Service Request. The tab has a form of nested table with header row containing information about Survey, answering user and Assignment. The detail rows contain actual answers for selected header. Answers to child surveys are included in the parent survey answers. If the same survey was answered multiple times, only the last answer set per Survey, User, Task and Assignment is displayed.