Using Voltara Intelligence · Lesson 2 · everyone

A work order, start to finish

One real job followed through every step, who does each step, and the six points where the app will stop you.

By the end of this lesson you can do your own part of a work order without help, and predict when the app will refuse an action and why, before you press the button.

Warm-up from Lesson 1, from memory: (1) Say the seven steps of the work-order ladder. (2) Which two things may you never do with your own job?

(1) Created, approved, assigned, in progress, completed, verified, closed. (2) Approve a job you raised, and verify work you did.

Everything below was done for real on 15 October 2026, in a training copy of the app running the current code, with five training accounts: Sara (supervisor), Paul (plant manager), Carla (corporate), Adam (admin) and Tariq (technician), all at Aden Solar. The messages in quotation marks are the app's own words.The training copy has no live plant data, so a few panels in the screenshots are empty. The buttons, steps, rules and messages are the real ones.

1 · Raise it

Who: anyone at site, plant or admin level. Corporate users cannot raise work orders. Where: Maintenance Hub → Work Order Center → + Log Corrective / PM Work Order (technicians also have New WO under Quick Actions on their home page).

The new work order form filled in: asset Central Inverter Block A, priority Medium, title, maintenance type CM, scheduled date, description, discipline Electrical, estimated hours 2. — The form Sara filled in. Asset is optional; a specific title and description save the technician a phone call. The amber line is the app noticing a similar open job: check it before you create a duplicate.

Type says what kind of job it is: PM (preventive), CM (corrective), Breakdown, Predictive or Emergency.
Priority sets the deadline, counted from the moment you save: critical 4 hours, high 1 day, medium 3 days, low 7 days. You can set it directly, or pick Impact and Urgency and let the app work it out.
Discipline and the asset tell the app how dangerous the job is (see step 4).

When you save, the job gets a number (here WO-2026-1011) and the status created. The app also builds a safety pack for it: a draft job hazard analysis (JHA), a risk assessment and a planned toolbox talk, plus a permit to work if the job is electrical or otherwise high risk.

2 · Approve it

Who: anyone except the person who raised it. Sara tried to approve her own job and the app said: “segregation: the raiser cannot approve”. A job needs one to three sign-offs. Its value sets the starting point, and its priority can only raise it:Read from the app's approval rules on 15 October 2026. With the standard value bands: under $5,000 one level, from $5,000 two, from $50,000 three. A job with no cost estimate is valued at its estimated hours × $50. Your administrator can change the bands; if none apply at all, the app asks for all three.

Low or medium priority: the value decides (most everyday jobs need one level).
High priority: at least two levels.
Critical or Emergency: always all three.

Level	Signed by
1	Plant level (supervisor, plant manager)
2	Corporate, in Work Order Approvals
3	Admin

The fence job was medium priority with 2 estimated hours, so it needed one level: Paul approved it and it became approved at once (the timeline says “Fully approved (1 level(s))”). On a bigger or more urgent job the status stays created until the last level signs. If you approve and nothing seems to change, the job is waiting for the next level.

Emergency jobs wait for approval too The reference panel at the top of the Work Order Center says an Emergency job goes “Create → Assign Immediately” with “No approval wait”. In the app that is not true. We tried to assign an unapproved Emergency job at once, and the app refused: “This WO needs higher-level approval before assignment.” An emergency at critical priority needs all three levels. If you have a real emergency, make the site safe first, then get the approvers on the phone.

3 · Assign it

Who: plant level or admin (supervisor, plant manager). Where: the Assign button on the job's row, or the Dispatch tab. The picker lists technicians with their workload (“0 open”) and warns when someone lacks a matching skill (“no Inverter Maintenance”). Status becomes assigned, and the job appears under My Active Work Orders on the technician's home page:

The technician's home page: greeting, counts of open work orders, upcoming PMs and plant alarms, Today's priorities, My Active Work Orders, My Permits to Work, and Quick Actions. — Tariq's home page. A technician's home is built around their own work, permits and quick actions.

4 · Make it safe, then start

Who: the technician presses Start Work, but other people sign off parts of the safety pack first. Pressing Start opens a Pre-Start Safety Verification. This is what Tariq saw on the inverter job, before anyone had done the safety paperwork:

Pre-Start Safety Verification for WO-2026-1005: Job Hazard Analysis and Permit to Work shown with red crosses, four technician confirmation boxes, a red Blocked message, and a greyed-out Start Work button. — Red items block the start. The Start Work button stays grey. Only a corporate or admin user can override it, in a recorded emergency (Lesson 4).

On the low-risk fence job the pack had three items, and each was signed off by a different person:

Job hazard analysis: the app drafted it; Tariq submitted it; Paul (plant level) approved it. Tariq could not approve it himself. (HSE Center → JHA.)
Risk assessment: reviewed and marked mitigated at plant level.
Toolbox talk: Sara recorded the talk with its two attendees.

With all three green, Tariq ticked the four confirmations (PPE worn, toolbox talk held, isolation verified where needed, test equipment in date), which are recorded with his name and the time. Start Work turned green, and the job moved to in progress. Electrical jobs add a permit to work and often an isolation (LOTO); Lesson 4 covers those.

5 · Do it and complete it

Who: the assigned technician. While working, record photos and parts, and answer every step of the job's Checklist (the row's Checklist button, or the phone). The app refuses to complete a job with checklist steps left blank: “Checklist gate: this work order cannot be completed - 6 of 6 steps not recorded at all.” Then press Complete:

Complete Work Order dialog: a mandatory pre-completion checklist of four ticked statements, and a completion notes box describing the work done. — The four statements are mandatory and are never pre-ticked. Below them: notes, root cause category (required for corrective and breakdown jobs), optional failure, cause and remedy codes, actual times and downtime.

Write notes a stranger could understand a year from now: what you found, what you did, what you left behind. For corrective, breakdown and emergency work, fill in the failure codes too; they feed the reliability reports. A corrective job also needs equipment downtime hours: “Enter 0 if the fault caused no production loss.” Status becomes completed.

6 · Verify and close

Who: plant level, and never the person who did the work. Tariq tried to verify his own job: “You do not have permission to set a WO to 'verified'”. Paul checked the work on site and pressed Verify. For corrective work the app wants the failure, cause and remedy codes at this point: “Cannot verify without a failure code, cause code, remedy code.” Then he closed it. Closing straight from completed is refused: “WO must be verified before closing (Complete → Verify → Close).” Verify and close are each stamped as Paul's electronic signature. The timeline (the Timeline button on any row) shows the whole life of the job: The timeline (the Timeline button on any row) shows the whole life of the job:

Timeline for WO-2026-1011: Created, Approved, In Progress, Completed, Verified and Closed, each with a date and time, then the activity list with Paul's signed verify and close. — WO-2026-1011 from created to closed in one afternoon. The activity list names the person behind every step; “tamper-evident e-signature” marks Paul's verify and close.

7 · Practice

Allowed or refused?

All eight cases were tried in the training copy on 15 October 2026, and the app's own reply is quoted.

From memory: (1) Name the three safety-pack items the fence job needed, and who signed off each one. (2) A critical job: how many approval levels, and who signs each? (3) Paul says “I approved it but it is still created”. What is the most likely reason?

(1) JHA: technician submits, plant level approves. Risk assessment: marked mitigated at plant level. Toolbox talk: supervisor records it with attendees. (2) Always three, whatever its value: plant, then corporate, then admin. (3) His level was not the last one; it is waiting for the next approver.

Your part, by role

You are	You do
field Technician	Raise jobs you find. Submit the JHA. Tick the four pre-start confirmations, start, record photos and parts, complete with notes and codes.
plant Supervisor, plant manager, HSE	Approve level 1 (not your own). Assign. Approve JHAs, mitigate risk assessments, record toolbox talks. Verify (not your own work) with the failure codes, and close. Cancel a job, with a reason.
corporate Approver	Sign level 2 in Work Order Approvals. You cannot raise or move jobs.
admin	Sign level 3. Everything a plant user can do, at every plant.

Do next (10 minutes), in the app Open Maintenance Hub → Work Order Center, pick one closed job at your plant and press Timeline: name who did each step. Then open the reference panel at the top of the page and spot the two lines that no longer match the app (Emergency “no approval wait”, and the routes that skip Verify). The printed User Guide chapter 10 has the same two errors.

Questions? Ask me in the chat, for example “how do I change a job's priority?” or “what goes in the failure codes?”. Then try it: find one open job at your plant, open its Timeline, and say which step it is waiting for and who must act next.

Reference: Work order card · Glossary · Previous: Lesson 1 · Next: Lesson 3, Alarms: from warning to work order