ServiceLink & ServiceLink Flex - Original Technician Notes

 

In This Article

• Introduction
• Enabling Original Technician Notes
• Permissions
• In ServiceLink
  
  • Managing Original Technician Notes
  • Service Reports
• In ServiceLink Flex

Introduction

A new type of notes called Original Technician Notes have been added to Work Order Segments in ServiceLink and ServiceLink Flex!

Functionally, Original Technician Notes are very similar to regular Work Order notes. Compared to regular notes, however, Original Technician Notes have three important properties:

1. Original Technician Notes cannot be edited or deleted once saved.
   This important property makes Original Technician Notes an infallible record of the statements the technician made while completing a Work Order. This is useful if your dealership requires an unedited copy of a technician’s notes for legal reasons.
2. Enabling Original Technician Notes changes the behavior of the Customer Service Report.
   When generating a Customer Service Report for a particular technician, only Original Technician Notes written by that technician will appear on the report. This ensures that Customer Service Reports only contain information relevant to the technician for which they are generated.
3. Original Technician Notes are copied to regular notes - but the reverse isn’t true.
   Whenever you save a new Original Technician Note, a copy of that note will also be saved to the Segment’s regular notes. This copy can be edited and deleted, and will appear in the Work Order’s general Service Report. The Original Technician Note will NOT be affected by any edits you make to the copy. Regular notes, meanwhile, will NOT be copied to Original Technician Notes when saved.

Keep reading to learn more about how Original Technician Notes can be enabled and used!

Enabling Original Technician Notes

Original Technician Notes are an optional feature and are disabled by default. If you would like to enable this feature, please contact your Texada account representative.

Permissions

All ServiceLink users with access to Work Order Segments can view existing Original Technician Notes. 

The ability to create Original Technician Notes is determined by the Workorder.Segment.TechnicianNotes.Create permission. In order to be able to author new Original Technician Notes in ServiceLink and ServiceLink Flex, the user must belong to a security role with this permission enabled.

To manage security roles, login to ServiceLink as an administrator and navigate to Admin → Security.

In ServiceLink

Managing Original Technician Notes

Once Original Technician Notes are enabled, a new “Original Technician Notes” tab will be visible under Notes and Special Instructions when viewing a Work Order Segment in ServiceLink. Click on it to view Original Technician Notes for that Segment.

You will also see a new “Add Original Technician Notes” button. Click it to author a new Original Technician Note. This process is identical to that of leaving a regular note: select a template from the drop-down at the top of the window, then begin typing. Use the red and green checkboxes to the left of each line to make that line visible internally (to other ServiceLink users) and externally (to the customer), respectively.

Once you are finished, click “Add” to save your note. Remember that Original Technician Notes can’t be edited or deleted, so make sure to proofread before saving!

Whenever you save an Original Technical Note, the system will automatically prepend it with the following three lines:

1. A dividing line to visually separate your note from others
2. The name of the technician who authored the note
3. The date and time on which the note was written

Remember that a copy of your Original Technician Note will also be saved under All Notes.

Service Reports

When viewing a Work Order in ServiceLink, click the “Print” button in the top-right corner of the screen to open the Print Work Order window. This window gives you several options for printing Work Order documents.

The behavior of two documents available from this window is affected by the addition of Original Technician Notes: the Service Report and Customer Service Report. The below table shows what information these reports include depending on whether or not this feature is enabled:

	Original Technician Notes Enabled	Original Technician Notes Disabled
Service Report	Includes External regular notes for ALL technicians.  Original Technician Notes are NOT included directly. However, remember that Original Technician Notes are copied to regular notes when first saved.	Includes External regular notes for ALL technicians.
Customer Service Report	Includes External Original Technician Notes ONLY for the technician for which the report is run. Regular notes are NOT included.	Includes External regular notes for ALL technicians.

 

In ServiceLink Flex

In ServiceLink Flex, a new “Original Technician Notes” button will be visible on the Segment screen. Tap it to author an Original Technician Note for that segment.

As in ServiceLink, this process is identical to that of leaving a regular note. Once this note is saved, it will be visible under Original Technician Notes in ServiceLink, and a copy will also be saved to the Segment’s regular notes.