Since forever, there has been a feature within ServiceDesk where, when two techs are needed on a job, the office can schedule two appointments: one for the lead tech and a second for the intended "helping" tech.  To show the second is but a "helping" appointment and not a regular one, it should be configured with the box that normally holds the JobTitle (e.g., "WP/Smith") to instead have text precisely matching this format "Hlpng GR" (where, for this example, "GR" would be the abbreviation for the lead tech who is expected to be helped).

This strategy has served well to inform the helping tech of what's expected of him.  But there has been nothing implicit in the lead tech's appointment information to inform him of the fact that a helper is scheduled to assist, nor of whom that intended assister happens to be.  To provide such information to the lead, it's been incumbent on office personnel to attach AttnNotes, or similar.  Of course, it's been a bit of a burden to do this, and sometimes the task is forgotten, which leaves the lead tech very poorly informed.

With these two releases (please note it is a new release of both SD-Mobile and SD-MobileLink, and updates to both are required to enable this new functionality), that prior and long-standing hole is filled.

Specifically (and firstly), there is now an explicit indication (where applicable, of course) within SD-Mobile's Job-Roster page, as follows:

Secondarily, the Job-Details page will show in format similar to this, where applicable:

We have not at this time made provision to further inform in cases where you might have scheduled for more than one assisting tech.  If you have this situation and need, you'll need to let us know.

The big one here is we added visibility into PartsPick information (what parts have been ordered for the job and/or spec-tagged from inventory).  All may thank Tom at Best Service in Denver for encouraging us to make this addition into a high-level priority.  His thinking is, if techs are in any degree involved in triaging their own jobs, this PartsPick information is critical for them to be seeing in advance.

We also added an indication of whether, in regard to any appointment, the customer would like to have it moved sooner (relates to the "Wants-Sooner" checkbox within the underlying JobRecord back in ServiceDesk).  The thinking here is if a tech finds himself with some open capacity (perhaps because he was just stood up for an appointment, for example), he can look in the Future-Sched Viewer to see if there is an upcoming appointment which the customer wanted to have moved up.  If so (and if the physical location is favorable), he may call to see if "right away" may work for that customer.  In result, you may have a thrilled customer, and the technician will have a more productive day.

Finally, for the Future-Sched Viewer, we also added the same "Who-is-helping-me" visibility, for a lead tech that is being assisted, as we added within SD-Mobile itself for a lead tech (there, of course, it applies to any appointment where it's the actual day of the appointment; whereas here it's similar visibility, but for future appointments instead).

From the start, an element of information we thought essential for provision to each tech was the prior history on each job.  Specifically, we have thought it most important for the tech to know what was done within the context of prior visits.  We did not think it essential (or necessarily helpful) for the tech to see all the tedious details as present within the entire underlying JobHistory narrative as present back in ServiceDesk.  So, SD-MobileLink has long been coded to extract just the portions from that narrative that describe actual and direct work, in particular as connected with prior PVRs.

A benefit of this strategy (besides giving the tech information in an abbreviated format that easily highlights only the particular information he likely needs) is that it economizes the quantity of data that must be uploaded by the office, then downloaded by each tech.  Thus, it reduces your data bill.

Regardless, from time to time there have been users who felt it would benefit their techs to have unabbreviated histories.  So, we've now added that option:

As you can see, it's a simple new radio-button selection within SD-MobileLink.  If you want the full (and tedious) narratives for your techs, change in this new setting to the second option.