Designing Around the End User's Workflow
Design a workflow that helps facilities coordinators review, track, and manage maintenance requests. Define triggers, user inputs, result interpretation, and follow-up actions or blockers. Include identifiers and relevant request details, allow users to review and correct information locally, and keep unresolved requests visible. Support manual assignments without updating external systems, and clearly indicate ownership and completion status during handoff.
Why summary counts fall short
Try completing a maintenance handoff from this output:
Plumbing: 1
Electrical: 0
All requests processed.
Suppose a facilities coordinator reviews an exported request CSV each morning, then manually assigns eligible requests in an existing tracker. The routing calculation behind those counts is correct. Which tracker record should they open next?
The morning CSV run reports: “Plumbing: 1; Electrical: 0; All requests processed.” The routing calculation is correct. What can the coordinator safely conclude?
The run reports one plumbing routing result, but doesn’t say which request it is.
The summary gives enough information to find the plumbing request in the tracker.
One plumbing assignment has been completed in the tracker.
All requests were processed, so no unresolved records need checking
The message “All requests processed” does not distinguish between completed processing, resolved blockers, and completed tracker assignments. The summary confirms only that processing has completed. Without request identifiers and visibility into the two unresolved review items, the coordinator cannot identify the remaining investigation and assignment tasks.
Each reported item should include an identifier, the required next action, and instructions for handling blockers. Provide separate assignment and review lists to support the handoff. Adding another chart would not address the missing task-level information.
Mapping the first-week workflow
A first-week workflow describes the user’s trigger, inputs, interpretation of results, next action, correction path, and handling of likely exceptions. It is a bounded design exercise: Choose the situations worth supporting immediately rather than attempting to predict every production situation.
Assume the routing backend already works. This fictional brief requires assignment recommendations and visible unresolved records, prohibits writes to the tracker, and permits correcting a local CSV copy. Start with those boundaries and the coordinator’s existing tools:
Obtain the morning request export and keep a local working copy.
Supply that copy to the routing process. ...