Editing Planned Maintenance Generation Records

This help file applies to an out-of-date version of MainBoss.
The most recent version of MainBoss is MainBoss 4.2.4.
For the latest version of this help file can be found here.

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The Planned Maintenance Generation Editor lets you generate new planned maintenance work orders. (For more on planned maintenance, see Planned Maintenance.)

To open the editor, go to Unit Maintenance Plans | Generate Planned Maintenance in the control panel and click either New Planned Maintenance Batch or Edit. The editor window contains the following:

Details section: Shows basic information for the record.

User Contact: A read-only field telling who generated the planned maintenance record. (If you are creating a new record, this will be your own name.)

Generation Interval [only appears when editing defaults]: Specifies a number of days. This states how often you intend to generate planned maintenance work orders; for example, if "Generation Interval" is 7, you intend to generate PM work orders every week. For more, see Planned Maintenance.

Entry Date: A read-only field giving the date when this record was created.

End Date: MainBoss will generate work orders for planned maintenance jobs that should be done up to and including the given date. (The default date set by MainBoss is based on your "Generation Interval" value.)

Single Purchase Orders: If this box is checkmarked, MainBoss will examine all the purchase order templates associated with the work orders to be generated. If several templates are directed to the same vendor, MainBoss will create a single purchase order that contains all the items from all the templates for that vendor. Some users may find the combined purchase order more useful than several separate orders for the same vendor.

If Single Purchase Orders is left blank, MainBoss will generate a single purchase order from each purchase order template associated with each generated work order.

For more on purchase order templates, see Purchase Order Templates. For more on purchase orders, see Purchase Orders.

Purchase Order Creation State: When MainBoss generates a purchase order from a template, the purchase order may be put into several states: Draft, Issued, Voided, or Closed. For example, if you put a purchase order into the Draft state, it is considered tentative and subject to change; if you put a purchase order into the Issued state, it is considered ready to be submitted to the vendor. A purchase order template may specify what state should be used when a purchase order is generated from the template. "Purchase Order Creation State" lets you specify a different state from the one specified in the template. The state you specify in "Purchase Order Creation State" will be applied to all purchase orders generated in this batch.

Work Order Creation State: Similar to "Purchase Order Creation State". By default, each generated work order is created in the draft state. However, you may wish to put generated work orders into some other state instead—most likely the open state, indicating that the work order is ready to be printed. (Remember though that if a work order is open, some of its information is locked down and can't be changed unless you first Suspend the work order.)

For Access Code options: Let you specify what to do when the access code for a unit is different than the access code for the task description:

Prefer value from Task: If both the task record and the unit record specify an access code, MainBoss assigns generated work orders the access code from the task. However, if the task record doesn't have an access code, MainBoss uses the code from the unit.

Prefer value from Unit: If both the task record and the unit record specify an access code, MainBoss assigns generated work orders the access code from the unit. However, if the unit record doesn't have an access code, MainBoss uses the code from the task.

Only use value from Task: MainBoss always uses the access code from the task record. (If the task record doesn't have an access code, generated work orders won't have an access code either.)

Only use value from Unit: MainBoss always uses the access code from the unit record. (If the unit record doesn't have an access code, generated work orders won't have an access code either.)

For Expense Model options: Let you specify what to do when the expense model in the unit record is different from the one in the task record. The options work the same way as the options in For Access Code.

Comments: Any comments you want to associate with this particular generation process.

Generation Details section: Lists preliminary details about the work orders to be generated. This section is only filled in when you click the Generate button.

Generation details are provided as a way to review the potential schedule before work orders are actually created. This is particularly important when you set up your initial PM scheduling and when you introduce new PM tasks/timing records. You can review the details to make sure they make sense. If not, you can revise your timings and try again (by hitting the section's button).

Code: Which unit is involved in each job. Under each unit, you'll see one or more lines indicating jobs that should be scheduled for the unit. Each line has a sequence number, useful in situations where more than one job needs to be scheduled for the same unit. In this case, the first job is numbered Seq 0, the next is numbered Seq 1, and so on.

PM Generation Detail Work Start Date: The date on which work will be scheduled to start if the work order is actually generated.

Entries in the Generation Details list are marked with various symbols. For an explanation of these symbols, see

http://www.mainboss.com/support/faq/4/gendetails.htm

View Work Order: Displays the contents of a work order selected in the Generation Details list. Note that the list often contains entries that do not correspond with work orders; the View Work Order button will only be enabled when you select an entry that does have an associated work order.

: Searches the generation details for a particular record.

: Updates the generation details to reflect any recent changes. In particular, if you adjust any of your maintenance timing records, the details are regenerated with the new timing.

When you are first setting up maintenance plans, you can create a timing record and then Generate to see what jobs will be generated. If the list isn't correct, adjust a timing record, then to see if you've corrected the problem. In this way, you can fine-tune your unit maintenance plans until they work the way you want.

Work Orders section: Lists actual work orders that have been generated. It's a good idea to review the work orders that you generate, in case they need adjusting. For example, you should make sure that jobs haven't been assigned to people who are on vacation. You should also check Items | Reports | Item Restocking in case you need to order materials for the newly created work orders.

The buttons in this section are similar to the buttons in the work order table viewer. For example, you can use Add Work Order Comment to add a comment to the currently selected work order. For more information, see Viewing Work Orders.

View Work Order: Displays the contents of a work order selected in the Work Orders list. Note that the list often contains entries that do not correspond with work orders; the View Work Order button will only be enabled when you select an entry that does have an associated work order.

Errors section: Lists any errors that were encountered during the Commit process. Every time you Commit a set of generated work orders, you should check this section to see if errors occurred. Check the "Disposition details" field of each entry in the list to see the nature of the error; in many cases, this will indicate that a task or maintenance timing record has a problem that needs to be corrected.

Generate: Clicking this button fills the Generation Details section with entries. Once these have been generated, the button changes into Change Scheduling Parameters.

Change Scheduling Parameters: Clears out the Generation Details section so you can start again with new parameters. For example, if you made a mistake typing "End Date", you might end up with far more or far fewer work orders than you expect; in this case, click Change Scheduling Parameters to delete everything in Generation Details, then retype "End Date" and Generate again.

Commit: Generates the final work orders. MainBoss will create a Work Orders section in this record which lists the work orders that were created.

Commit & Close: Performs a Commit operation, then closes the window.

Save: Saves the generation record (if necessary) after work has been done.

Close: Closes the window. If you've generated Generation Details by clicking Generate, but have not yet generated actual work orders by clicking Commit, MainBoss will ask you if you really want to close the window. If you do close the window, MainBoss does not create a planned maintenance generation record.

: Re-evaluates all unit maintenance plans and fills in Generation Details again.

For general information on work orders, see Work Orders. For information on editors in general, see Using Editors.

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