| Test Case Title | TC 1.24 – Integrated Ticketing and Facility Management system, incident manaement, ticketing management |
| Goals | |
| Prerequisites |
The user is registered and logged in the system and has privileges to access to dashboards for ticketing management. Using a PC or Mobile with a web browser. A third party Maintenance and Facility Management System is accessible by Snap4City. |
| Expected successful result | The user can launch a new maintenance event and can see the evolution of the ticket management integrated in a Control Room dashboard |
For accidents and maintenance tickets, incident managment, ticketing management, we intend:
- any events that may lead to the intervention of some team in the city or in the industrial plant, they can be programmed or may occur for same reason.
- events for maintenance and/or for rescue teams.
- very simple events which can be solved by actions performed by a single person as well as complex activities involving several people and phases, uto to their formal closure.
Those kind of accidents/tickets are typically managed by Workflow systems that allow to define and manage:
- accident/ticket classification and coding
- workflow for each classified type of accident/ticket
- user interface for collecting data and metadata regarding the accident, and controlling its evolution in the several offices
- reports that can be produced for each phase of the accident evolution according to its workflow
- eventual metrics and KPI to assess the quality of the accident solution such as: time to react, time to perform, number of people involved, cost, cost of the material, distance, time taken to solve, etc.
As workflow management tool for maintenance/tickets and rescue we suggest to use OpenMaint, https://www.openmaint.org/en/home which is an open source we typically use on these cases. and we have successfully used for a number of large cases by us integrated with Snap4City and with our Business Intelligence tool for Predictive Maintenance, see for example: Scenario: High Level Control of Industrial Plant (industry 4.0)
Snap4City can be easily integrated to any other workflow management system solutions.
So that the integration of Snap4City with workflow management system can be very simple or sophisticated depending on your applications, but is can be performed by using IOT Applications that can also access to your plant /city data and context. The integration of Snap4city with workflow management system for managing tickets for maintenance/tickets or eventually for rescue teams, etc. can be easily performed by defining the interaction on Dashboards and the flows via the IOT Applications. The main functionalities from the IOT Application MicroServices are provided with a list of Special Blocks/node for Node-RED that allow you to:
- get list of active processes,
- access to the status of a process,
- access to the possible next states of a process,
- change the status or send of a message to change it,
- receive an event about the change of status of a given process.
- confirm the completion of an action from the operators to the system
- activate a new ticket and action into the workflow
Typically, the solutions for workflow management can produce reports regarding any elements of the workflow. The Workflow can be customized as well as the reports. Examples can be: incidents and events occurrence, taking in charge of them, planning the actions, acquisition of the action from a team, final actions performed and closure of the event.
Snap4City can interact with third party Maintenance and Facility Management Systems so that users can manage maintenance tickets and check their evolution directly via a Snap4City dashboard.
In the example below the openMaint tool by Tecnoteca (https://www.openmaint.org) is used for the management of maintenance tickets. openMaint is an open source application for the management of mobile assets (buildings, infrastructure, etc.), plants and technical devices, furniture, etc.
The interaction between Snap4City and the openMaint Facility Management System for the management of maintenance ticket is described in the following.
- The ticketing workflow
From the point of view of a user interface, an openMaint process is represented by a series of menu forms in which it is possible to insert different inputs representing the evolution of the maintenance ticket. While, from a point of view of the definition of the process, it is instead represented by a visual workflow.
Fig. Maintenance Ticket Requests Workflow schema.
In the example above:
- the green circle represents the beginning of the process
- the red circle represents the end of the process
- green blocks represent the menu forms
- yellow blocks represent the elements for data processing.
- rhomboid-shaped blocks with the symbol of an X represent bifurcations.
The process described in the above workflow is divided in 6 phases represented by the green blocks in the previous figure. The phases are: 1) The opening of the ticket with the request of maintenance; 2) the phase of check of components necessary to proceed with the work; 3) the assignment of the work to a maintenance team; 4) the phase in which the team confirm that started the maintenance work, specifying also the means of transport used; 5) the confirmation of the execution of the work in which the team can decide to: 6) confirm that the event has been successfully solved; simply abort the event; or to start a new request since a different problem to be solved has been identified.
The openMaint user interface is divided into three parts. The column on the left side shows the Navigation menu (1) with a list of tables, the process to start the maintenance request, and the different reports available. Each table represents the inventory of a specific part, i.e. the list of components, the list of plants, the teams, the vehicles, etc. These tables are used during the different phases of the maintenance request management.
In the upper part there is a table (2) with the list of individual instances of the process, each row represents a maintenance ticket, while the lower part (3) is formed by a form in which different parameters have to be inserted by the user and are the input of the process.
- Launch and manage a maintenance process
Each phase of the process is identified in the Actual instance phase box on the top right of the bottom part (see next figure) and have different input parameters.
At the top left of the openMaint screen, there is the button [+] Start Maintenance Request that allows to create a new maintenance ticket.
In the lower section of the screen there are buttons that are activated during the creation of an instance of the process.
- The "Save" button is used to save the instance in its current state.
- The "Advance" button is used to proceed the instance to the next state. After executing this command, it is not possible to return the instance to a previous state.
- The “Cancel” button close the process without saving any changes.
Thanks to the integration to the Snap4City platform, an operator on the field can start a new maintenance request by filling a specific online form using a tablet. To start the request, the operator has to insert a description of the problem, select the plant in which the problem is present from a drop down list, and click the Submit button. The form is the same available in the openMaint tool to start a new request.
After pressing the Submit button, the operator see the confirmation that the request has been correctly sent.
After the submission of the new ticket, the maintenance team receives the new request in the openMaint environment and is able to proceed with the process by clicking on the Edit activity button (1) or to abort the process by clicking the Abort Process button (2). On the top right of the bottom part, the status of the process is represented (3). Different possibilities of interaction can be set in openMaint according to the user role.
By clicking the Edit activity button, it is possible to pass to the next phase of the process to check the availability of the needed components in the warehouse. On the right of the bottom part, the Check Components button is available (1).
To proceed the maintenance team has to select the specific needed component(s) from the list that is coherent with the plant selected in the request and click the Confirm button (see next figure). If the needed components are present, the process goes to the next phase, otherwise it is necessary to wait until the required materials are available.
After the selection and confirmation of the available components, by clicking the Advance button the process goes to the next phase that is about the assignment of the team to perform the repair. A check is made to determine if the requested team is currently already employed or if it is available. If a free team is selected, the process can pass to the next phase, otherwise the user is redirected from a waiting phase.
To assign a team to a maintenance work, the Select Team button is available on the right of bottom part (1).
A popup with a list of the available teams is shown, in which it is specified if they are currently busy or are available to perform the job. Select the Team and click the Confirm button.
To go ahead with the process it is also necessary to specify the date and hour of the team assignment and to click the Advance button.
In the next phase of the process, the team at work has to specify the transport mean used to reach the device (if used), the date and time of start of the work and a description of the work executed.
By clicking the Advance button, the process passes to the last phase in which the maintenance team has to specify if the work has been completed successfully or not.
In the Test field (1), a description of the test carried out after the execution of the work has to be specified. Also, the user has to set the test date and time (2) and has to specify if the test has been completed successfully by ticking the corresponding option (3).
Once the Advance button is clicked, the last phase of the process is shown in which the team can add a final comment about the work done.
The closure of the work can be done also by the team in the field by using a tabled via the following online form. The form contains the list of the all open maintenance activities.
By clicking on the Advance button on the right, the corresponding form for the completion of the work is shown. In the form the maintenance team on the filed has to specify a description of the work performed and has to select one of the available choices:
- Confirm that the work has been successfully completed.
- Abort the work in case the problem was solved without any intervention.
- Start a new request if the team verified that the cause of the problem was different.
After the selection, the user has to click on the Advance button.
- Print reporting
During the different maintenance phases, the system allows to print reports in PDF representing the status of each phase or a final Report showing all phases evolution and status.
In the left column of the openMaint interface a Report folder is available with the list of the different reports that can be produced (1). Also on the right side of the bottom part, a Print Report button (2) is available during the editing process of the phase.
By clicking on a specific item in the Report folder on the left, a new popup is shown in which the user has to indicate the ID number of the interested maintenance request. The available reports are about:
- The report about the new events request phase (click to see an example)
- The report about the take in charge phase (click to see an example)
- The Final report representing all information of the different maintenance phases (click to see an example)
- The report with the list of all maintenance events (click to see an example)
- The list of all request of maintenance not yet taken in charge (click to see an example)
Each report can be download as PDF file, or in other formats like: ODT, RTF and CSV (1). Once the format has been selected, to download the report the user has to click the Download button on the right (2).
Also, during the editing of each phase, the user can print the corresponding report by clicking the Print Report button on the right.
A new pop up is shown asking to confirm the ID of the event. By clicking the OK button, the corresponding report is generated.
- Control Room dashboard
Thanks to the integration with Snap4City, the management team can follow the evolution of the different maintenance requests and perform some action for the management of the different active requests.
A dashboard for the control room is available, showing the list of all the maintenance tickets, as in the following picture.
On the top left of the Control Room dashboard, it is possible to define the number of events to be shown per page (1).
The list of events is divided in the following column:
- The color representing the severity code (2);
- The column with the ID of the events (3);
- The date of the event (4);
- The description of the problem to be solved (5);
- The phase of the maintenance request (6);
- A specific event can be search by using the search field (7).
The operator in the control room can perform some actions to manage the event directly from the Control Room. According to the buttons available in the Control column (8), the operator can click the Details button to see all the details of the selected event.
Also the operator can Abort the process by clicking the Delete button. A pop up is shown asking to confirm the deletion of the process.
