Signing in on your phone

There is no password

Signing in on the app is two short steps and neither of them is a password. The first asks for a code your office gives you. The second asks who you are. That is the whole of it.

This is not the same login as the website. Somebody who was invited to WorkOrders by email signs in to the site with their own email address and a password, and never needs a code; the code exists so a technician can be working within a minute of being read eight characters over the phone. See your team for the two ways people get onto an account.

Your code is yours

It is issued to you, by name, from the office's Team screen. It works once, it works for one person, and it stops working after a day. So it is not something to write on the whiteboard or pass to the new start — when somebody else needs to get on the app, the office makes them their own, which takes about five seconds.

Once you are signed in, the code has done its job and is spent. You do not need it again unless you sign out, change phone, or wipe the one you have — and then you ask the office for a fresh one.

Step 1 — the code

The first screen asks for the code your office gave you, with the line "It decides whose jobs land on this phone." Type it and press Continue. Case does not matter on the way in — the field types in capitals — but the code itself does have to be right.

What a wrong code looks like

Nothing happens at step one: a code is not checked until you have filled in step two and pressed Sign in. When it will not work you get an alert headed We couldn't sign you in, and the message says which of the three things went wrong: the code is not valid, it has already been used, or it has expired. All three have the same fix — ask the office for a new one.

Press Change on step two to go back and correct the code without starting over.

Step 2 — who you are

Full name, Email address and Contact number, under the line "So the office knows who has picked up a job, and how to reach you on site." The phone checks them before it sends anything — a field it is not happy with says why underneath itself once you have left it, rather than turning red while you are still typing.

If you are already on the company's team, these do not decide who you are. The code does. Type your own details by all means — your contact number is kept, so it is worth getting right — but you will be signed into the account the office issued the code to, and nothing you type here can sign you into somebody else's. That is deliberate, and it is the main thing that changed about signing in.

If the office made the code for somebody new, this is where their account gets created — as a technician, on the details typed here. A typo in the email address is worth avoiding, but it is not the disaster it once was: the account belongs to the code, not to the address.

What the office has to do first

Go to Team and make the person a code. There are two ways, and they are the same button in two places:

• Somebody already on the team — App code on their row. Use this for a new phone, a wiped phone, or one that has been signed out.
• Somebody new — type their name under Sign someone in on the app. They do not need an email address or an invitation; signing in creates their account.

Either way a code appears on screen for you to read out. It lasts a day, works once, and can be revoked before it is used. Nobody else can use it, so handing it over the phone is fine.

Everybody at once

Codes for the whole crew makes one for everyone active who has not got a live one, listed together so you can print them and hand them out. It is there for the one day it is genuinely needed — the day the whole crew sets the app up at once.

If your company is still on the older app

Firms that came across from the previous WorkOrders system are still running the old iPhone build, and it works the way it always did: one organisation code, shared by everybody, found at Settings → Your company and good until somebody regenerates it. If that is you, the rest of this article still describes your app, but the code is the company's rather than yours.

That shared code is worth treating like the door code to the yard: anyone who has it can get onto your board. Regenerate code on the same card replaces it — phones already signed in carry on working, and the old code stops working for new sign-ins. So the time to regenerate is when somebody has left with it in their pocket, not on a schedule.

Signing out, and being signed out

Settings → Sign out asks you to confirm — "You'll need to set your account up again on this phone" — and then clears the saved session off the phone. Your work stays exactly where it is; it is the phone that forgets, not the account. You will need a new code from the office to sign back in.

Occasionally the app signs you out on its own, and when it does it says so at the top of the sign-in screen rather than dumping you on a blank form. The usual message is "Your session has expired. Please set up your account again."

Somebody who has left cannot get back in

When the office deactivates somebody on the Team screen, any code they are holding stops working at the same moment, and so does signing in on the app. It is one switch, not two — deactivating is the whole answer.

Two-factor authentication does not reach the app

Requiring two-factor for your company protects the website. The app has no password, so there is nothing for a second factor to sit behind, and switching that requirement on will not stop a phone signing in with a code. See signing in securely.

More than one phone

Each phone holds its own session, so setting the app up on a new handset does not sign anybody out of an old one. Two things end a session: signing out on that phone, and the office deactivating the person on the Team screen — which ends all of theirs at once. If a phone has been lost and there is nobody to sign out on it, deactivating and reactivating the person is the lever the office has.