When creating a new Work Order, ServiceBox forces me to Assign an employee/User to be responsible for the Work Order, but does not force me to Schedule a technician/User to the Work Order .   Can I not have work orders in a queue, when I don’t know when I want to schedule it, or who will be going, but its ready to be Scheduled?


Yes, you can.  What we would recommend in this case is that you first off Assign the Work Order to the person who will be handling the scheduling, or a User who would never ever be in the field physically working on a Work Order.  That way they show up on the Scheduler as a visual reference, and you know that these people may not/will not be working on the Work Order/job in the field.  Also, you know that it wasn't given to anyone in particular.


The second idea here is to use your Work Order Status area to indicate if you have Scheduled the Work Order, or leave it as Unscheduled - ie. put it in a queue/workflow.  This way, when you look into your Work Order section - either in your ServiceBox site or your Scheduler - you may call up a list of Work Orders as not scheduled to any Users/technicians.  Once you do schedule this Work Order to an User, remember to change the status from "Unscheduled" to "Scheduled" to find it there and stay in your correct workflow in ServiceBox.



The key here is understanding the difference, on a Work Order, of an Assigned User and a Scheduled User in our "ServiceBox vernacular".  Assigning a Work Order does NOT schedule it.  In some organizations, the Assigned User represents the person with overall responsibility for a Work Order, to see that it is "Closed" and creating revenue for a company.  This may be a Project Manager, a Dispatcher, or an Office Manager - if not the owner.  Therefore, only assigning a Work Order to a Tech User does not allow the Work Order to show up on the Scheduler.  To Schedule a User to a Work Order, you may:
  1. When creating the Work Order from scratch from the template, use the Timeslot button on the Work Order at the bottom to schedule a User/tech.  It allows you to choose the day or time.  Or,
  2. When creating a Work Order, do so directly from the Scheduler, either the Calendar view or Dispatcher view, and click on the time you would like to start the Work Order at in the Scheduler - or the All Day section of the date.  This way, a Work Order template will appear, the timeslot area at the bottom of the template will show automatically, and with the timeslot chosen for one hour only - if you have not chosen the All Day area.  You may increase the time for the Work Order on the Scheduler here, to book the employees estimated time for the Work Order, for longer than one hour, if need be.  You only need to choose the correct User, if doing this in the Calendar mode.  Or, 
  3. Once a Work Order is created, if you did not schedule an employee to complete the Work Order at the time of creation, you may go to the Scheduler Icon Button on the upper-right to insert the employee and book the day and time for the Work Order.  OR, you may go directly to the Scheduler, call up the Work Order Number in the search screen (only one way) and then drag and drop the Work Order from the left-side across onto the Scheduler day and time you would like to have the Work Order scheduled at.  Always confirm that the Work Order has been scheduled for the correct User by clicking on the "dropped" Work Order and changing it to the correct User.  Each User should be identified by different colours in their set up, to distinguish them on the Scheduler and not over commit their time.