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Activities

What are activities?​

Alloy is much more than a simple inventory system! Your assets will require a mixture of scheduled and reactive maintenance to keep them performing optimally throughout their lifespan.

Alloy can help you to plan and perform this maintenance. Through the use of activities, you can respond to events, record observations and allocate work.

There are three types of activity in Alloy:

  • ​ Defects - an issue to be remedied (e.g. a faulty lamp, a blocked drain, a vandalised bench). It may have been noticed by a worker during a visit, reported by a member of the public, or triggered automatically by sensor readings.

  • Tasks - a collective term for:

    • ​ Inspections - an instruction to observe and record the condition of an asset, typically by visiting its location. There may be a checklist of steps to follow or questions to answer.

    • ​ Jobs - an instruction to perform work of some description.

All activities have a Status attribute (e.g. Reported, Completed) and tasks also have a Priority attribute (e.g. Low, Critical). Workers can attach photos to record the condition of an asset or the results of completed work.

Work items​

Jobs can be formalised with the use of discrete work items. These act as templates for defining units of work that can be quantified, costed and linked to a budget. It's possible to set default values as needed, which can be overwritten when the work item is applied to a specific job.

Alloy includes two system designs that you can create work items from. Feel free to extend these designs or create your own!

A diagram listing the different types of work item

Job work items​

A specific job can have one or more job work items. These are specific instances of work items that contain values relating to that job. This makes it clear to workers what equipment and materials are required to perform the job and the costs associated with them.

For example, imagine a job to repair a pothole. It can use several work items to measure different aspects of the job:

  • the Duration of billable working time
  • the Quantity of workers needed for the repair
  • the Area of square road surface to be excavated
  • the Volume of asphalt used to fill the hole
Note

With the Financial Accounts module installed, job work items can be used to generate invoices!

Design your own activities​

These generic activity types exist in Alloy as interfaces. While items can't be created directly from an interface, you can create a design that implements an activity interface, and then create items of that design.

For example, imagine creating a design named Tree Jobs that implements the Jobs interface. It will inherit the standard Jobs attributes alongside any attributes you define for it. An item of the Tree Jobs design can also be considered an item of the Jobs interface.

Activity designs can only be applicable to specific asset designs. This ensures that only relevant activities can be created for a particular asset type, e.g. tree jobs can only be created for trees!

Note

Optional modules are available for Alloy that include ready-made activity designs for various service areas, including Highways, Street Lighting and Waste.

Task management​

Tasks can be scheduled ahead of time or created on the spot. All tasks have attributes for logging key milestones in their lifespan (e.g. Raised Time, Start Time, Completed Time). Some of these get populated automatically when the task's status changes.

Projects​

To organise multiple related tasks, you can add them to a project. This lets you see overall progress at a glance, makes it easier to manage their statuses and assignments, and lets you plot a route between each task's location.

A project item showing the number and proportion of completed tasks

Teams​

Tasks and projects can be assigned to teams or individual team members. A user can belong to any number of teams. This determines the assigned work they see by default.

There are several ways to assign work to teams, including a dedicated planner that lets you visualise the timelines of your teams and drag tasks directly into available timeslots.

The timeline in the Task Assignment planner showing tasks allocated to teams

Activities on the go​

Workers can take Alloy with them by installing Alloy Mobile on their iPhone, iPad or Android device. This enables them to receive and complete assigned tasks, and register any defects they notice while out in the field.

Learn more​

To learn more about activities, projects and teams, see Activities in Alloy Web.