Does anyone use a good job tracking software?

[spud1]

Hi there,

Can anyone recommend a simple, intuative software or system for tracking jobs and issuing job sheets for 3No. electricians? I currently use Google workspace for scheduling/calenders but this doesn't provide any means to database and track our jobs or issue forms (job sheets) for our engineers. I've tried the free trial on Tradify but found it way to complicated with to many bells and whistles. I'm not really looking for any integration with accounting software either, just something basic and easy to use.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Avo Mk8]

There was a similar question here a while ago that elicited an interesting discussion, but not sure it will give you an answer!

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[SparkyChick]

@spud1 ,

If you're up for creating your own, check out a product called Notion.

I'll try and sum it up... at the most basic level, it's a digital notebook that allow collaboration. But pages in the book don't just have to be text and images, they can be databases where you can define the various fields. It's very easy to then create relationships between databases... so PRODUCTS can be referenced by QUOTE ITEMS for example, which are in turn referenced by QUOTES.

It has good task management facilities as workflow/task management is one of the reasons a lot of companies use it. It's available as a desktop app for Windows and Mac and it's available as a mobile app for Android and iOS. The last time I tried off-line working, it did have a limited ability to work off-line in that it allowed me to edit the items I had recently worked on and that were cached locally... the changes I made did indeed find their way back on-line when I did get an internet connection.

The other side of it is, there are people out there selling templates which are effectively self contained sections of notebook that provide various bits of functionality. Some are free and some are commercial. If you do take a look and need help, I may be able to assist as I'm working quite a lot with it at the moment as I use it to keep all the information I had floating around in my head straight and in one place. There's also lots of videos on YouTube about it, and just getting some free templates and looking at how they do stuff can be enlightening.

Whilst it may not be the final answer, what I'm finding as I'm using it is that it can serve as a nice prototyping approach, to flesh out what you want and how you want things to link together and work. To give you some idea of what one section of my workspace contains....

Some of these (Guidance, Technical Notes and Common Blocks) are actually pages that contain useful information... the rest are databases. The bulk of the complexity is in the project management side, the rest are mainly simple lists of different bits and pieces. Projects for example support sub-items, so you break a big project up into a number of smaller projects each with their own tasks (which also support sub-items to allow you to break them up).

As I say, the web is awash with information about the product, loads of info, loads of tutorials and loads of templates to get you started.

 

[timhoward]

Working link:

Your connected workspace for wiki, docs & projects | Notion

A new tool that blends your everyday work apps into one. It's the all-in-one workspace for you and your team.

www.notion.so

 

[SparkyChick]

Working link:

Your connected workspace for wiki, docs & projects | Notion

A new tool that blends your everyday work apps into one. It's the all-in-one workspace for you and your team.

www.notion.so

Thanks Tim, assumption has made an --- of me I thought the issue was because I'm running a plug-in that blocks scripts. The link in my post is sorted and should work now.

 

[timhoward]

Thanks Tim, assumption has made an --- of me I thought the issue was because I'm running a plug-in that blocks scripts. The link in my post is sorted and should work now.

I've just been playing with it. It's like Trello on steroids.
Thanks for the heads up about it

 

[spud1]

@spud1 ,

If you're up for creating your own, check out a product called Notion.

I'll try and sum it up... at the most basic level, it's a digital notebook that allow collaboration. But pages in the book don't just have to be text and images, they can be databases where you can define the various fields. It's very easy to then create relationships between databases... so PRODUCTS can be referenced by QUOTE ITEMS for example, which are in turn referenced by QUOTES.

It has good task management facilities as workflow/task management is one of the reasons a lot of companies use it. It's available as a desktop app for Windows and Mac and it's available as a mobile app for Android and iOS. The last time I tried off-line working, it did have a limited ability to work off-line in that it allowed me to edit the items I had recently worked on and that were cached locally... the changes I made did indeed find their way back on-line when I did get an internet connection.

The other side of it is, there are people out there selling templates which are effectively self contained sections of notebook that provide various bits of functionality. Some are free and some are commercial. If you do take a look and need help, I may be able to assist as I'm working quite a lot with it at the moment as I use it to keep all the information I had floating around in my head straight and in one place. There's also lots of videos on YouTube about it, and just getting some free templates and looking at how they do stuff can be enlightening.

Whilst it may not be the final answer, what I'm finding as I'm using it is that it can serve as a nice prototyping approach, to flesh out what you want and how you want things to link together and work. To give you some idea of what one section of my workspace contains....

View attachment 116818

Some of these (Guidance, Technical Notes and Common Blocks) are actually pages that contain useful information... the rest are databases. The bulk of the complexity is in the project management side, the rest are mainly simple lists of different bits and pieces. Projects for example support sub-items, so you break a big project up into a number of smaller projects each with their own tasks (which also support sub-items to allow you to break them up).

As I say, the web is awash with information about the product, loads of info, loads of tutorials and loads of templates to get you started.

Wow this could be just what I am looking for thankyou Sparkychick!

I'm going to take a YT deep dive with my headphones and some popcorn and will let you know how I get on when I come out on the other side. Thanks again!

 

[SparkyChick]

So I'm tinkering with the API at the moment, writing a little Javascript server process to do some data processing... the documentation is a little thin in places and if you're not familiar with some of the quirks of asynchronous Javascript programming (async/await and promises) it can seem a little complicated but it does open up a whole world of possibilities.

I have a little area of my workspace that is public and one of the things I've got in there is a list of companies I won't do business with and why... nothing major, I can back up everything I'm saying, but I have a much bigger list. So I'm writing this little program to copy the stuff I want on public display into the public area... it's one of the limitations at the moment in that if you add a view of a database that isn't shared to a public page, it won't show up and there's no options to say 'I want to show this view which uses this filter to decide if a record should be visible or not' (I think there are a lot of requests for this sort of thing from users, but for now it's not an option).

Another part of my workspace serves as a dump for all things related to my health issues... mainly so I can get it all out of my head and clear some space for other more important stuff... in getting that together I've found there are some things I'd like to automate beyond the capabilities provided by the app. Some of these are things that should probably be in there already but for a variety of reasons aren't... like the ability to create a new page in a database and set say it's title to a value from the page you're currently reading (as an example, I have appointments in a calendar, sometimes they get delayed... I'd like to click a button, create a new copy of the appointment, set the title to X (Delayed from <DATE>) and link the two pages together. A lot of that you can do using a button which you can add to the page (for each database you can specify a number of page templates which, when they are used for new entries, set property values and page content - buttons, headers, text etc.) and when the user clicks that button you assign a list of tasks, one of them is add a page and another is set property values but it won't allow you to set a property value on the new page to the value of a property on the current page (because making that new title is easy using a formula field you just can't use it to set the title of the new page). Using the API you can theoretically get around it by setting a command field on the current page which your little program looks for and then does the required actions because it has access to everything.

There is a lot of info around the internet about it, but if you do feel you want to tinker with the API and writing your own integrations for doing data processing there's info out there but it doesn't really cover the complexities of asynchronous Javascript and the issues that presents can cause you major headaches so if you need a little guided advice, hit me up in DMs and I'll happily chuck you some code and explain it. It can be a bit mind bending at first but once you get the gist of it, it should click into place