Setting Up Routine Contracts and Maintenance Planning

Open the account routine workspace

1. Open Customers.
2. Open the customer account.
3. Select the Routines tab.
4. Review the summary cards for contracts, active routines, due soon, overdue, and next due.

The routines panel is account-owned. Use it to define the recurring commitment before asking Scheduler to create visits.

Create a service contract

1. Select Add Contract.
2. Enter the contract name.
3. Set the status: draft, active, paused, or ended.
4. Assign an owner when one person should review renewals.
5. Set contract start, contract end, next review, and renewal notice days where known.
6. Add notes that explain the commercial wrapper.
7. Save the contract.

Use a service contract when multiple routines should sit under the same maintenance agreement or renewal review. A routine can still exist without a contract wrapper.

Create a routine

1. Select Add Routine.
2. Enter a routine name.
3. Choose a service contract when the routine belongs to one.
4. Set status to active when it should generate work.
5. Choose the service line.
6. Choose the covered scope: account, site, system, or asset.
7. Select the matching site, system, or asset when the scope requires it.
8. Set frequency: annual, six-monthly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, or custom.
9. Add anchor date and next due date.
10. Choose work type: inspection or scheduler task.
11. Set the inspection type or task type.
12. Add the default field resource, duration, flex days, crew size, access equipment, out-of-hours flag, industry override, and notes where relevant.
13. Save the routine.

Routines should be scoped as tightly as the operational work requires. An account-level routine is useful for generic customer work; asset-level routines are better when the job must be tied to a specific asset.

Pause, resume, and review routines

1. Pause a routine when the customer pauses the commitment but the history should remain.
2. Resume a routine when it should generate future work again.
3. End a routine when it should no longer be part of the live maintenance plan.
4. Use the upcoming windows list to review due dates before generating work.

Paused and ended routines are not the same. Pause is temporary; ended is a lifecycle decision.

Preview routine generation

1. Open an active routine.
2. Select Preview.
3. Choose the target month.
4. Run the preview.
5. Review ready rows, warning rows, and blocked rows.
6. Read each blocker before generating work.
7. Confirm the preview only when the rows are correct.
8. Select Generate Ready Work.

The preview is required before generation. It protects the planner from creating visits when a routine has no due date, points at inaccessible site/system/asset scope, or uses a default field resource who cannot receive scheduled field work.

Understand what generation creates

Routine generation creates either inspections or scheduler tasks, depending on the routine work type.

1. Inspection routines create inspection work with the configured inspection type.
2. Scheduler task routines create planner tasks with the configured task type.
3. Generated work carries routine identity and generation period so duplicate generation can be avoided.
4. Next due dates are advanced after generation.
5. Scheduler must be available for generation actions to appear.

Generated work should still be reviewed in Scheduler before field deployment. A generated row is not automatically the same as a confirmed customer appointment.

Work routine health prompts

Routine health prompts highlight maintenance setup that needs review.

Use prompts as triage. Fix the owning customer, site, asset, or routine record rather than dismissing the signal by default.

Troubleshooting

Reference surfaces

1. Use Customers for the CRM account route and routine panel.
2. Use Scheduling for generated work after it enters the planner.
3. Use PPM Forecast to see future routine pressure once generated or target-month work exists.