Why an installation is its own record
A sign job is not done when it leaves the shop: there is an old sign to take down, scaffolding, a power connection and an appointment with the customer. When installation details live in the order notes or a group chat, dates shift, the address gets lost and nobody is sure who is going.
In SignFlow the installation is not a field inside the order but a record of its own, and each change writes only its own details: moving the date never erases the address, the contact or the crew.
- Installation date and time
- Address and the name and phone of the person to call on site
- Notes for the crew (sizes, scaffolding, power, parking…)
- The crew going out: one person or several
Planning in a table and a calendar
The installations screen has two views. The table filters by date range, status and crew, and searches by order number, customer or address. The calendar shows a week as a time grid or a month as day cells; “Team rows” puts each crew member on their own row so you can see who is booked on which day.
The table has date, order, customer, address, crew and status columns; the customer's phone number can be called and the address opens in a map. Ready ranges include today, this week, next week and this month. A planned installation whose day has passed without completion is marked late, and dates from earlier years show their year.
Jobs without a date wait in a tray beside the calendar. A planner drags a job onto a day or onto a crew row to set its date and crew, and an accidental move is undone with “Undo”. If someone else changed that installation in the meantime, the move is refused and the calendar refreshes, so nobody overwrites newer information.
Jobs in packing can be scheduled too, so the appointment can be booked before production is fully wrapped up.
What an installer sees
An unassigned job is visible to every installer, but its photo and completion wait until it is assigned to someone. That way no installer can close another crew's job. On the phone, “Only my jobs” narrows the list to the installer's own work.
- The installations assigned to them
- Installations nobody is assigned to yet, so they can be picked up
- A subcontracted crew sees only the jobs assigned to it, never the unassigned pool
Working from the phone on site
- 1
Today's jobs open first
On the phone the installer sees today's jobs as cards: time, customer, order, address and status. It works in the SignFlow mobile app or in the phone's browser.
- 2
One tap to call or get directions
From the card, calling the site contact and getting directions in a maps app is one tap; the job notes and the crew are on the same screen.
- 3
Take photo & complete
When the work is done, the installer taps “Take photo & complete”: the camera photo is added to the order as an installation photo and, once it passes the check, the installation is closed. Who closed it and when is recorded.
No photo, no completion; no installation, no closed order
Completing an installation takes two things: a scheduled date and at least one installation photo on the order. The photo must be a picture in JPEG, PNG, WebP or the HEIC format phones use. On a job without a date, the screen says why the button is unavailable.
An order that needs installation cannot be completed until its installation is complete, so nobody in the office can mark a job finished and forget the field work. If an order is canceled, its unfinished installation is removed with it.
Reminders and the day at a glance
Every morning the crew with an installation the next day is notified; if no one is assigned yet, the people who can plan installations are. The home page shows today's installations and how many are still open, and an installer's own day is listed on the same page.