Once you are familiar with vWork, we have some best practices and tips that can make things run smoothly.

1. Keep job templates as simple as possible

This keeps things fast and keeps your mobile workers happy. Think about what you must have a worker do and leave out any unnecessary steps or custom fields.

2. Remove Administrator and Dispatcher mobile permissions

If you don't want your vWork Account Administrators or Dispatchers to be assigned to jobs (they do not do jobs in the field as part of their duties) then remove them from the Mobile worker permissions. This will prevent their names from showing in the Schedule or on the list of available workers to assign to jobs.

To do this,

open the User Permissions for this person
uncheck Enabled in Mobile Permissions.

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3. Improve your Mobile Workers' phone performance

Remove Create Jobs as a permission if not required

If Workers aren't required to create jobs from their mobile phone, remove this permission for each worker in User Permissions. This will make their phone sync faster (as no templates or customers need to be synchronized with the device).

To do this,

open the User Permissions for each person
uncheck Create Jobs in Mobile Permissions.

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Remove the ability to sync customer data with workers phones

When you have a very large customer database (tens of thousands of customers) and customer information synchronizes with you workers' mobile phones, this may slow the performance of your workers' phones.

If you find this is an issue for your workers, you can have synchronization of customer information with workers' phones disabled. Workers' phones will no longer store customer information, but workers will still have access to customer information online, using the internet. Customer information for a specific job will still be saved with the job on the phone. Workers will need internet access via Wi-Fi or mobile data to update customer information or create new jobs for a customer.

If you want to do this for your account please contact support@vworkapp.com and ask us to turn off Account-wide Mobile Customer Sync.

4. Limit the Job Templates your workers can use

If you want your Workers to Create Jobs it is good practice to limit which templates they can use to only the ones they need for their job. This will optimize the performance of their Phone. Their phone will then synchronize with the specific templates they require instead of all templates used by your organization.

To do this:

open the User Permissions for each person
ensure the Create Jobs box is checked in Mobile Permissions
search for and select the specific templates they need from Select Templates. Type the first two or more letters of the Template name to display a list of templates to select from. You can add as many as you require.

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6. Mobile device setup: helpful tips

Improve workers' workflow

Improve workers' workflow when they use the vWork mobile app. Have the app return to the Jobs list when a worker completes a job so they can see what they need to do next.

To do this, in the mobile app:

Go to Settings > Interface
Scroll to Display
Check the checkbox Return to jobs list on completion

Timestamp images if this is required

Timestamping images is useful for proof of delivery or to show the condition of an item at a given time.

To do this, in the mobile app:

Select Settings>Interface
Scroll to Display
Check the checkbox Timestamp Image

Improve phone performance (older devices)

Older devices sometimes have limited storage space and their performance slows when this gets full. You can improve performance by stopping images/photos taken in the vWork app from saving to the phones storage. Images/photos that are included as part of a job will still sync to your vWork account along with the other job information.

To do this, in the mobile app:

Select Settings>Interface
Scroll to Attachments
Uncheck Keep vWork images on your phone

Make signing into the mobile app fast and easy with a QR code

Use QR codes to sign in to the mobile app so your workers are not required to remember an email address or password to sign in to the mobile app. This is particularly useful when you have created your vehicles as your mobile workers in vWork to assign jobs to the vehicle. It makes it super easy for your workers to sign in to the vehicle's vWork user account to see the jobs assigned to the vehicle for the day. See the article How do I login to the Mobile App with a Barcode of QR code for more information.