Manage work orders
Summarize
Summary of Manage work orders
Work orders in ServiceNow represent requests for off-site work, created and managed by users with specific roles. They enable tracking and completion of tasks by off-site agents, ensuring proper handling of work initiated from various record types such as incidents, problems, changes, cases, project tasks, or other work orders.
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Creating Work Orders
Users assigned the wminitiator or wminitiatorqualifier roles can create work orders. Work orders can be created from scratch or generated from existing records, including:
- Incident
- Problem
- Change
- Case
- Project task (requires integration with Project Portfolio Management)
- Existing work order
Only one work order can be created from each source record, which helps maintain clear tracking and avoids duplication.
Work Orders Created From Existing Work Orders
If the scope of an ongoing work order changes, you can create a new work order from the existing one to reflect the updated requirements. Before doing so, assess if adding tasks to the current work order might suffice. When creating a new work order from an existing one, key information such as affected configuration item (CI), caller, location, priority, short description, and description is copied, allowing existing work orders to serve as templates for new ones.
Work Orders Created From Other Records
When work must be assigned off-site and tracked, work orders can be created from incidents, problems, changes, cases, or project tasks. Relevant fields from the source record are automatically copied to the new work order to preserve context. For example:
- Incident: Caller, location, priority, short description, description
- Problem: Affected CI, priority, short description, description
- Change: Affected CI, priority, short description, description
- Case: Account, contact, affected CI, location, asset
- Project task: Short description and location; synchronized fields include state, scheduled start, and estimated end (requires integration with Project Portfolio Management)
Filtering and Organizing Work Orders
Work orders can be filtered and grouped based on attributes like qualification group, location, source record (initiated from), priority, and state. This capability helps manage and organize similar work orders efficiently for better operational oversight.
Work orders are requests for off-site work. Users with the appropriate roles create the work orders and provide the necessary information needed for the work order tasks. Then other users qualify those work orders and create the tasks necessary to complete the work order.
Creating work orders
If you have the wm_initiator or wm_initiator_qualifier role, you can create work orders. You can create entirely new work orders, or you can create a work order from another record.
Work orders can be created from these other record types: case, incident, change, problem, or project task. They can also be created from another existing work order. For each record, you can create only one work order.
- Work orders created from another existing work order
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If the scope of an existing work order changes during the execution phase, you can create another work order from it. Analyze whether the scope change can be managed by adding additional tasks instead of creating another work order.
When you create a work order from an existing work order, the following information is copied from the original work order:
- Work order record reference (in the Initiated from field)
- Affected CI
- Caller
- Location
- Priority
- Short description
- Description
Because some information is copied from the original record, an existing work order can be used as a template to create new work orders.
- Work orders created from an incident, problem, change, or project task record
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If an incident, problem, change record, or project task must be assigned to an off-site agent and tracked, you can create a work order from it. Some information from the original record is copied automatically into the new work order.
Record type Fields copied to the work order Incident - Incident record reference (in the Initiated from field)
- Caller
- Location
- Priority
- Short description
- Description
Case - Account
- Contact
- Affected CI
- Location
- Asset
Problem - Problem record reference (in the Initiated from field)
- Affected CI
- Priority
- Short description
- Description
Change - Change record reference (in the Initiated from field)
- Affected CI
- Priority
- Short description
- Description
Project task Note:Before work orders can be created from project tasks, Field Service Management must be integrated with Project Portfolio Management- Short Description
- Location
These work order fields are synchronized with the project task- State
- Scheduled start
- Estimated end
For more information about the synchronized fields, see Integration with Project Portfolio Management.
Work orders can be filtered based on different attributes, such as qualification group, location, initiated from, priority, state, and so on. This help to create a group of similar work orders.