Manage work orders
Summarize
Summary of Manage work orders
Work orders in ServiceNow Field Service Management represent requests for off-site work that require coordination and tracking. Users with appropriate roles can create work orders either from scratch or by generating them from existing records such as cases, incidents, changes, problems, project tasks, or other work orders. Work orders facilitate structured management of tasks and resources to fulfill off-site service needs efficiently.
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Creating Work Orders
Users with the wminitiator or wminitiatorqualifier roles can create work orders. There are multiple creation pathways:
- From existing work orders: Allows for handling scope changes by copying relevant fields and potentially using the original as a template.
- From other record types: Incidents, problems, changes, cases, and project tasks (with Project Portfolio Management integration) can serve as sources, automatically copying key related data.
Created work orders can be filtered by attributes like qualification group, location, priority, and state to organize and manage similar requests.
Work Order Templates
Templates enable authorized users to automate the creation of work orders along with associated tasks and part requirements, streamlining the process and ensuring consistency.
Managing Work Order Tasks
Tasks and part requirements can be created for work orders, even in the draft state, allowing work to proceed without full qualification if necessary.
Closing, Cancelling, and Deleting Work Orders
- Closing: Work orders close automatically when all associated tasks are completed.
- Cancelling: Used when work is no longer needed or the work order duplicates another.
- Deleting: Should be avoided except for error cleanup, as closed and cancelled work orders remain inactive but retained for tracking.
Additional Features
- SLAs: ServiceNow SLAs track service levels provided by individuals and groups for work orders.
- Linear Assets: Special capabilities exist to create and manage work orders for inspecting linear assets, helping maintain asset reliability.
- Planned Work: Work orders can be generated for scheduled or on-demand planned work based on work schedules.
- Qualification: Work orders require qualification to ensure tasks are created and assigned, which can occur automatically or manually.
Work orders are requests for off-site work. Users with the appropriate roles create the work orders and provide the necessary information needed for the work order tasks. Then other users qualify those work orders and create the tasks necessary to complete the work order.
Creating work orders
If you have the wm_initiator or wm_initiator_qualifier role, you can create work orders. You can create entirely new work orders, or you can create a work order from another record.
Work orders can be created from these other record types: case, incident, change, problem, or project task. They can also be created from another existing work order. For each record, you can create only one work order.
- Work orders created from another existing work order
If the scope of an existing work order changes during the execution phase, you can create another work order from it. Analyze whether the scope change can be managed by adding additional tasks instead of creating another work order.
When you create a work order from an existing work order, the following information is copied from the original work order:
- Work order record reference (in the Initiated from field)
- Affected CI
- Caller
- Location
- Priority
- Short description
- Description
Because some information is copied from the original record, an existing work order can be used as a template to create new work orders.
- Work orders created from an incident, problem, change, or project task record
If an incident, problem, change record, or project task must be assigned to an off-site agent and tracked, you can create a work order from it. Some information from the original record is copied automatically into the new work order.
Record type Fields copied to the work order Incident - Incident record reference (in the Initiated from field)
- Caller
- Location
- Priority
- Short description
- Description
Case - Account
- Contact
- Affected CI
- Location
- Asset
Problem - Problem record reference (in the Initiated from field)
- Affected CI
- Priority
- Short description
- Description
Change - Change record reference (in the Initiated from field)
- Affected CI
- Priority
- Short description
- Description
Project task Note:Before work orders can be created from project tasks, Field Service Management must be integrated with Project Portfolio Management- Short Description
- Location
These work order fields are synchronized with the project task- State
- Scheduled start
- Estimated end
For more information about the synchronized fields, see Integration with Project Portfolio Management.
Work orders can be filtered based on different attributes, such as qualification group, location, initiated from, priority, state, and so on. This help to create a group of similar work orders.