trakki
Job planning for field service technicians
By Manuel Ober · · 4 min read
Maintenance can be planned, a breakdown cannot
Field service lives in two worlds. Maintenance has a cycle: a boiler once a year, a lift every quarter, a coffee machine every 3,000 cups. A breakdown has none: it comes in at half past eight and the customer is standing there.
Keep both in a notebook and you lose sight of the maintenance as soon as one week has been full of breakdowns. Then in autumn 40 boilers are overdue, and the breakdowns become more frequent.
Maintenance as a due date
In trakki every machine is a customer with a cycle: every 365 days, every 90, every 30. The last job and the cycle together give the due date, and the map shows it in colour: red overdue, yellow due in the next two weeks, green done.
The weekly plan grows out of the yellow and red points in one area. A day in the north, a day in the south, with real drive times in between and the time on site per machine. How the equipment list gets onto the map is in the guide Getting your customer list from Excel onto a map.
Breakdowns as an insertion
If a breakdown comes in at half past eight, it is pulled into the day as a call. trakki recalculates the remaining drive times and shows what still fits: two maintenance jobs perhaps, instead of four. The other two move to tomorrow, in the same area, not somewhere else entirely.
That is the difference from a list: the list does not know that the breakdown is at one end of the territory and the next maintenance job at the other. The map knows.
The job history per machine
What was replaced last time, which spare part was missing, who the caretaker is: trakki keeps every job per customer with date and note. One look at the record before you set off, instead of a call to the office.
For proof at the customer or in the workshop, trakki exports the jobs as Excel, for the period and in the scope you decide.
What a day with trakki looks like
Seven o'clock. The day is on your phone: five maintenance jobs in one area, drive times in between, planned time per machine. trakki hands the navigation to the first customer over to your usual navigation app.
Half past eight. A breakdown. Into the day it goes, the rest is recalculated, two maintenance jobs move to tomorrow.
At every machine. One line: what was done, what is missing, when to come back.
In the evening. Nothing. The report comes on Friday as Excel, not every evening in handwriting.
Software for job planning: what is out there
For job planning in service there are three families of tool, and they solve different problems.
Field service management such as Salesforce Field Service, Odoo, or the equivalent modules in trades software. They dispatch a whole team: distribute jobs, assign technicians, book spare parts, record times. They are right when a dispatcher steers several technicians, and oversized when you plan your own territory yourself.
Route optimisers put addresses into a short sequence. They help from around twenty stops a day, so more in delivery work than in service, where one job often takes an hour.
Planning tools for the individual answer the question that comes up daily in service: which machine is due, what is on the way there, and does the afternoon still work out if the breakdown lands at eleven. That is where trakki belongs.
A detailed comparison of the families, with prices, is in the guide Software for field sales planning.
What stays with you
Equipment lists with locations, access codes and contacts do not belong in someone else's cloud. trakki stores everything on your device, without an account. Phone and computer keep in step through your own storage, or at home over your Wi-Fi. More under Your customers stay your customers.
Where trakki stops
trakki is not a dispatch system for a team of twenty technicians and not a spare parts register. It plans the day of a technician with their own territory and keeps the job history. If you have an office that distributes the jobs, you use trakki for your own day, not for the dispatching.
Trying it costs nothing, to the home page.
Frequently asked questions
Can I store the time on site per machine?
Yes, every call has a planned duration; it goes into the calculation for the day. A boiler service at 90 minutes and a visual inspection at 20 can be planned correctly into the same day.
What about machines with no street address, such as pumping stations?
For locations without an address you place the point on the map by hand, once. After that trakki works out the drive time there like it does for any address.
Can my employer see the jobs?
Only what you hand over: the Excel export with date, machine and note. There is no access to your data, because there is no server holding it.