What’s New - IBM Maximo Mobile 9.0
Brief Overview: IBM Maximo Mobile connects your field technicians to the back-office. It delivers on-the-go access to work orders and helps determine and reserve the best tools and materials to increase first-time fix rates, reduce paper based inspections and boost technician’s productivity.
The release of IBM Maximo Mobile 9.0 introduces several new features and enhancements designed to improve user experience, streamline operations, and boost overall productivity. Updates like configuring idle time out ensure there is enhance security and user management. Performance improvements have been made to optimize data retrieval, limit unnecessary data downloads, and provide detailed error diagnostics. Additional user experience enhancements, such as improved UI and technician location sharing, provide near real-time tracking and efficient resource allocation. New capabilities for work order management and storeroom clerks, along with global synchronization across applications, ensure seamless and integrated operations.
Let us get into the details of the New Features
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Technician Location Sharing:
One of the major updates that we have done in MAS 9.0 is the location sharing of technicians which helps to bridge the gap of lacking visibility in field operations with back office. This feature now allows the planners and dispatchers to have near real time visibility in field work. Here are the steps to enable the location sharing
2. Performance Improvement changes
In order to improve performance, when connected, you can now perform work order search directly in the server, instead of just relying on records that were downloaded to the mobile device. Results returned from server side search are stored in the device so technicians can perform updates on returned work orders when in disconnected mode. Being a platform capability, customers can use the configuration tool to extend other data sources used in Mobile to behave the same as the work order server side search.
- Set mobile-server-search attribute to true for a datasource in the XML.
<maximo-datasource controller="ScheduleDataController" geometry-format="geojson" id="dswolist" object-structure="mxapiwodetail" order-by="wopriority" pre-load="false" saved-query="uxtechnicianownerfilter" selection-mode="single"> <schema id="gjw7p"> <attribute id="wymyz" name="autolocate"/> <attribute id="g4dk9" name="wonum" searchable="true"/> . . . <maximo-datasource-override id="serverSearch" mobile-server-search="true" page-size="5"/> </maximo-datasource>
- Limit the number of child records that are downloaded :
Mobile supports the ability to fetch relational data, but didn’t have controls about how many related records would be downloaded to the device.
With MAS 9.0, number of child records that are downloaded can be limited, and currently it’s set to return only the last 50 labor, tools and material actual transactions for work orders downloaded to the mobile device.
You can now do partial data update which improves the performance as only the needed components are refreshed from server. For eg- you can choose to update worklist data, supporting data and Map data independently, and only records changed in Maximo will be downloaded to the mobile device.
In the Mobile App, go to Cloud-> data update to select the desired option-
- Data retrieval optimization from local database
Data retrieval and display time are improved. Child data is automatically downloaded for records on cached versions of previously loaded parent records
- Related Data synchronization:
Previously, if the data update is done for one module then Mobile would not automatically update the dependent related data for other module. You would have to manually do the update for dependent module or, in previous releases, users would have the option to go to the cloud icon and synchronize all mobile modules together. Now, we have a happy news.. You do not need to spend additional time and effort to recognize dependency and do individual updates. When you check for updates from an module, the associated data gets synchronized automatically :), so if you have work orders that contain related inspections, Mobile will update both modules automatically and users do not have to sync all modules to have the related data to work in disconnected mode.
You can now analyse the data download error details, diagnose to retrieve details about the queries that are not performing well and take specific actions to improve the performance.
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On your mobile device, open the Maximo® Mobile Navigator.
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If an error is displayed during a data download operation, tap the error message to view details.
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You can click Perform diagnostics to perform the data download again using the same request parameters. This can help you troubleshoot the error by evaluating the response to the download request.
In order to enhance security, the configuration can be done to force user out if the session is idle for specific time.
You can now use property ‘maximo.mobile.userInteraction.idleTimeout’ to define the number of minutes for which if the session is idle, user will be logged out.
If the value is set as ‘-1’ , the idle time out is disabled.
The focus has been more around the improved user experience and many new enhancements are done in modules like Technician, Inspections, SR and even Maximo Application Framework to give better user experience. We will discuss about the details of the changes done for each module in subsequent set of blogs in the series.
5. Maximo Application Framework updates
In order to provide better experience of developers working on the MAF and better performance for user, there have been significant changes done. Some key ones are mentioned below. We will discuss in depth changes in the subsequent blogs.
- Additional configurations and canvas improvements
You can modify the appearance of the application UI through the canvas area. Preview an application XML component in the canvas, for example, an application page, and then drag and drop UI elements to rearrange the display. You can also delete or copy and paste elements in the UI. The XML code displayed in the XML editor updates as you change the appearance of an element from the canvas area. This was a major request from the developer community to have the application update changes to provide seemless user experience. In the future, our focus will be in similar direction to provide more such updates that make configuration easy.
- Support for multi-language deployment.
Maximo Application Framework Configuration application labels can be translated for non-English labels and menu items. For information can be found here-
Below is the high level snippet of the functional module wise changes . I will be covering the details in depth in my subsequent blogs.
I always say that the Technician is the backbone for the Field Service Management and hence, Maximo Mobile is very crucial application for Technician. Our focus has always been towards making it a seemless user experience for Technican. In MAS 9.0 you will see below new changes for technician module-
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Enforced Scan before start
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Assignment updates- You get to accept or reject the assignment
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Dispatch status-Dispatch status of technician gets shared with the dispatcher
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Different icons for start work / start travel
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SR description field supports rich text format
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Rename SR attachment
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Attachment Enhancement for improved performance-In previous releases, mobile device users created new service requests and added attachments before saving the service request record. Mobile device users are now required to save and submit a new service request record before they can add attachments to the record. Saving the record to the local database before they add attachments frees up device memory
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Stage Inventory Items
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Issue Inventory Items
Add multiple inventory items without reservation
Add reserved and non- reserved items to single inventory usage record
View and edit charge information for the items issued
Create inventory usage for transfer from mobile app
Transfer between sites and storerooms
Add or remove multiple inventory items to transfer
Create shipments for transfers within same site
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Asset Switch
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Asset swap function should be available for different scenarios such with linking with a work order or not, swap between functional locations (eg on train) and workshops, or between two functional locations (eg swapping wheel set on different trains)
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Linear asset support
During asset creation and editing, the ability to flag an asset as linear, as well as to define start and end measurement and descriptions, direction and LRM would be provided
Material Requisition Approval support from Maximo Mobile
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Maximo Mobile Calibration is part of the Technician application
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Some features (such as e-sig, tool checks, completion process) are part of Technician and not specific to Calibration
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Data Sheet processing is specifically Calibration
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Data Sheet Processing will include:
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Calibration, Functional and Dynamic processing
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Analog and Discrete processing
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Repeatable Points
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Technician will include:
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Tool Checks (based on MaxVar)
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Tool Validation Checks
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Check for completed required Data Sheets
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Tool Qualification Checking
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Optional e-sig (currently available)
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Technician can create a new Emergency workorder for critical situations
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The work type is automatically set as EM
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The priority of the workorder isautomatically set as ‘1’ (Critical)
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The status on creation of the workorder should be ‘Inprogress’.
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The Ownership is automatically be updated as the technician who is logging the workorder
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Maximo Manage desktop and Mobile share the same map. Front end is now using Open API which improves performance by 80%
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Additional functionalities added for below tools to provide seemless user experience
Layers Tool- can select and see the symbology of Layers tool
Identify Tool- Identify attributes associated with a map feature using this tool
Query Tool= Perform query on MAF Map components features. Select multiple modes like line poligon etc for performing the query
Results Tools- Once you query features, you can send the data to the results tool.
Sketch tool- New Tool added to format geometric elements such as shapes lines and points to any map. You can also draw poligons or perform annotations.
Edit Tool- to add features to the map
Show Related tool – This is a new tool to display the asset and locations that are related to multiple workorders at the same time highlighted on the map.
7. Improved upgrade experience
You can initiate an upgrade of an application through the Maximo Application Framework Configuration application interface.
Maximo Mobile increase first time fix rate, enhance technician productivity and provide a seamless experience between your backoffice and field service. Upgrade to Maximo Mobile 9.0 today , visit our website here
Kimi Jasuja
Product Manager-GTM, Maximo