IBM Maximo · Multi-Asset & Locations · Mobile 9.2
Real maintenance rarely touches just one asset. Here's how a single work order can cover many assets, locations, and configuration items at once — and what that experience looks like on a technician's phone, from map view to per-asset inspections.
This article first covers what Multi-Asset & Locations is and how it works, then walks through how technicians actually use it day to day in Maximo Mobile.
1 · What Is Multi-Asset & Locations?
Out of the box, a work order or service request has one asset field, one location field, and one configuration item field. That's fine for "fix pump P-101 in the pump room" — but real work is messier. A crew inspects an entire corridor of air handling units. A road crew resurfaces a stretch of highway touching several drainage assets. An IT team swaps switches across a dozen server rooms in one change. None of that fits the one-record model.
Multi-Asset & Locations is Maximo's answer: it lets you attach any number of assets, locations, and configuration items to a single work order or ticket.
Three Building Blocks
Asset
A physical piece of equipment — a pump, an HVAC unit, a vehicle. Each row can reference a different asset, even across sites.
Location
A physical or functional space — a room, a floor, a bin, a coordinate. You can list a work location without needing a specific asset.
Configuration Item
A CI from the CMDB, used in IT and infrastructure service management deployments.
All Three Together
One row can carry all three at once — e.g. a router CI, installed in a server room location, on a physical rack asset.
Nothing Breaks — It's Purely Additive Every work order still has its classic single asset/location/CI fields at the top. The first row you add is flagged primary and stays in sync with those header fields. A work order with just one primary row behaves exactly like an ordinary single-asset work order — full backward compatibility, no migration required.
A row's Asset, Location, and Configuration Item fields, side by side - Manage.
Why It's Worth Using
Fewer work orders
One dispatch, one WO, many assets — no more work order explosion for bulk or route-based jobs.
Geospatial clarity
See every affected asset and location on a live map, and jump straight to any of them.
Per-asset progress
Mark individual assets complete without closing out the whole work order early.
Per-asset inspections
Run a separate inspection form for each asset or location, right from its own card.
2 · Where You'll See It: Work Orders & Tickets
On a Work Order
| Event |
What Happens |
| Asset changed on a row |
Location and CI auto-fill; linear asset flag is set if applicable |
| Status changes to In Progress / Complete |
Any row flagged to move its asset executes that move |
| Work order duplicated |
Every row is copied to the new work order |
| Work order saved |
If rows changed, any attached dynamic job plan recalculates automatically |
One Rule to Know Every row needs at least one of asset, location, or CI populated — an empty row is rejected at save time.
On a Service Request or Ticket
Here's where things get genuinely powerful: when a ticket with multiple rows is escalated, Maximo creates one child work order per row automatically, each inheriting that row's asset, location, or CI.
Real-World Example A help desk logs one incident: "HVAC failure across floors 4, 5, and 6." The technician adds three rows — one air handler per floor. On escalation, Maximo generates three separate work orders, each routed to the right site technician — no manual splitting required.
One constraint worth knowing: rows on a ticket must stay in the same site as the parent ticket. Work orders are more flexible and can span sites, as long as the user has rights to each one.
3 · Multi-Asset & Locations on Mobile: The Technician App
This is where the feature really comes to life for a field technician. Here's the full experience, screen by screen.
3.1 · Finding It — The Multi-Asset Page
Open a work order, scroll to the navigator tiles, and tap "Multiple assets and locations." The tile is hidden entirely when a work order has no multi-asset rows, and shows a badge count when it does — an instant signal of how much ground there is to cover.
The "Multiple assets and locations" tile, with its badge count.
Each item shows up as a card, with an asset icon or a location pin telling you at a glance which kind of row it is. From there you can mark progress, run an inspection, view it on the map, raise a follow-up, or report a defect — all without leaving the page.
Pro Tip Use the sort and filter buttons in the header to organize a long list, and the built-in barcode scanner to jump straight to the right asset without scrolling.
3.2 · Map View — See Everything at Once
A toggle in the header switches the card list to a live map, plotting every asset and location across two layers — one for items with just a location, one for items tied to a physical asset. Clustering, tooltips, and indoor mapping are all supported, and the map pre-loads offline for use out of signal range.
| Symbol |
What It Means |
| Green |
Operating / active |
| Yellow |
Not ready |
| Red |
Decommissioned, broken, inactive, or missing |
| Gray cluster |
Multiple items at the same location |
Tap a pin to bring up its card as a bottom overlay; tap a cluster to expand it into a filtered list; tap the map background to clear your selection and return to the full list.
No Connectivity? No Problem — Mostly If the device is offline and map data hasn't been pre-loaded, the map toggle is hidden automatically — but the card list keeps working fully offline regardless.
3.3 · Per-Asset Progress & Inspections
Each card has its own progress checkmark — mark an individual asset done without touching the rest of the work order. If a row has an inspection form configured, a create-inspection button appears on the card; once a result exists, that button switches to open the existing one, with a green checkmark once it's completed. The work order's overall inspection badge counts these individual inspections right alongside the work order- and task-level ones, so a supervisor sees the full picture at a glance.
An asset card, showing its status and available actions.
3.4 · Raising a Follow-Up Work Order
One of the most useful field capabilities: any single asset or location can spin off its own follow-up work order, no planner involved.
Tap Follow-Up Icon on a Card
→
Create WO Page Opens, Pre-Filled
→
Review & Save
The new work order references the original job and carries the specific asset forward automatically.
3.5 · Reporting a Civil Defect
For organizations using the Defects app, a flag icon on each card opens a drawer showing any existing defects for that asset. From there, "Create defect" launches the Defects app with the asset, site, and location already filled in — and brings you right back to the Multi-Asset page once you're done.
3.6 · Linear Assets on the Card
For pipelines, roads, and rail segments, a card shows its Start and End Measure plus named reference points, and carries a dark "Linear" badge for easy spotting. The map supports line and polygon geometry for these too, not just point pins.
3.7 · Offline Support
| Action |
Online |
Offline |
| View cards |
|
|
| Mark progress |
|
(syncs on reconnect) |
| Enter meter readings |
|
|
| Launch an inspection |
|
|
| Map view |
|
(if pre-loaded) |
| Create a defect |
|
Needs connectivity |
| Create a follow-up WO |
|
(queued) |
4 · Real-World Use Cases by Industry
Utilities
A planned shutdown covers 12 pumps at one station. Each is its own row, with its own inspection and condition record, all closing together.
Facilities
An annual lighting inspection touches 40 fixtures across three buildings — worked in sequence, with failed units spinning off instant follow-ups.
IT / ITSM
A network refresh change ticket covers 20 switches across 5 data centers, each tracked and closed out individually as a CI.
Roads & Bridges
A patrol work order covers five bridge segments; defects like cracks or potholes get flagged per segment without breaking workflow.
Oil & Gas
A cathodic protection survey along a pipeline uses linear rows with offsets, tracking exact measurement points along the route.
Manufacturing
A production line overhaul touches a conveyor, motor, control panel, and sensors — different assets, one coordinated work order.
Healthcare
A calibration tour covers 30 infusion pumps across 6 wards, each with its own inspection and ward-level ownership tracking.
Fleet & Transportation
A yard manager adds 12 vehicles to one pre-trip inspection. Technicians work them in parallel, with a live badge count of what's left.
5 · Moving & Replacing Assets From a Work Order
Handled entirely in core Maximo — included here for context only, nothing happens on mobile for this part.
Simple Relocation
Fill In Destination on a Row
→
Check "Perform Move"
→
WO Status Changes
→
Asset Moved, History Preserved
No separate asset-move record needed — the move executes automatically as part of the work order lifecycle.
Asset Replacement / Swap
Swapping a broken asset for a spare uses two extra fields on the row: where the replacement currently lives, and its asset number. With the move flag also checked, the broken asset moves out and the spare moves into its place in one step — ownership records update to match.
Cross-Site Moves
Sites Must Match — On Tickets Work orders can freely span multiple sites, as long as the user has rights to each. Service requests and tickets are stricter: every row must stay in the same site as the parent record, or the save is rejected.
6 · Linear Asset Support
Organizations managing roads, railways, or pipelines can flag an asset as linear. Adding one to a row automatically unlocks measurement fields — start and end position, lateral offset, and named reference points ("from Milestone 12.4 to Milestone 19.8") — instead of treating the asset as a single point.
For jobs that span multiple days or visits, a linked progress record tracks incremental measured positions as the work advances — handy for a road crew paving in segments, or an inspection crew working down a pipeline over several shifts.
Real-World Example A pipeline inspection run covers an 85 km stretch of gas line as a single row. As the inspection progresses, incremental measurement records are added, and any geospatial tool orders by the primary row first so it surfaces on the map immediately.
7 · Common Questions
I added a second asset, but the work order header still shows the old one — is that a bug? No — the header always reflects the primary row. Secondary rows are additive and don't overwrite it. This is intentional, so reports and integrations that only know about the header field keep working correctly.
Why do some work orders have multi-asset rows and others don't? Only work orders where assets were entered through the multi-asset tab — or inherited from a job plan or PM that includes them — will have rows. Older records created before you adopted the feature simply rely on the header fields, and that's fine.
My Dynamic Job Plan isn't recalculating after I add rows — what's wrong? Check two things: that each row's work-quantity field is actually populated, and that a job plan is attached to the work order at all. Recalculation only fires when both are true.
DOES MULTI-ASSET & LOCATIONS SUPPORT CONFIGURATION ITEMS (CIS) ON MOBILENot yet — the mobile experience today is built around assets and locations. If your work involves Configuration Items, that's handled through Manage.
8 · Tips by Role
For Planners & Back-Office
- Use the sequence field to control the order technicians work through rows — route-based sequencing cuts down travel time on campus or corridor jobs.
- Mark exactly one row primary to set the main context for the work order.
- Only attach an inspection form to a row when you actually want per-asset tracking — leave it blank if the work order-level inspection is enough.
- For linear jobs, fully populate measures and reference points before dispatch to avoid field data-entry errors.
For Technicians in the Field
- Switch to map view first for spatial orientation, then back to the card list to work through items.
- Sort by progress so completed items sink down and what's left stays at the top.
- Raise a follow-up before leaving the site — the asset context carries over automatically, saving a trip back.
For Developers
Multi-asset rows are retained with the work order for audit history and are not purged on status change — only a full work order deletion cascades to remove them, along with any linked inspection results. The relationship is a standard child object on both work orders and tickets, so it imports cleanly through the Integration Framework without extra mapping work.
9 · Wrap-Up
Multi-Asset & Locations turns Maximo from a single-asset work management tool into something closer to a true field-operations platform. Whether it's a fleet inspection, a pipeline survey, a civil patrol, or a building's HVAC fleet, one work order can now coordinate the entire job — with independent progress, inspections, maps, and follow-ups for every asset involved, all without breaking a single existing single-asset workflow.
IBM Maximo · Multi-Asset & Locations · Mobile 9.2