Add or Edit Tasks
First thing to do is decide if the task will be assigned to a checkpoint or not. We have two different task types in SOVA:
- Tour Task - a.k.a. an "assignable" task would be a task that is required of your security officer when scanning a button at a tour checkpoint. Officers are not actually doing a task as much as answering a question. An example could be "Are all lights functioning in the area? Or, Is the door locked? It is recommended that you convert your questions and write assignable tasks in the affirmative, past tense, as these comments will appear in the tour reports and doing so improves the readability of the report. Below are some example questions that you may ask of your security officers when visiting checkpoints and how the tasks would be named in SOVA:
How you would name the task in SOVA
Are all lights functioning in the area?
Lighting was adequate in the area
Is the door locked?
Door was secured
Is the pool deck slippery due to water?
Pool deck checked - not excessively wet
Is the AED working?
AED battery checked and appears operational per visual inspection
Is the fire system working?
Fire alarm control panel on AC power - normal status
Are electrical panels clear?
Electrical panels are not blocked
Are elevators working fine?
No emergency buttons are lit on elevator panel
- Non Tour Task - a.k.a. a "non-assignable" task could be anything that is security related, that your officers do regularly which is not directly associated with a checkpoint. These are not written in the form of a question, but rather are actual tasks that require action like "Checked Parking Lot A", or "Provided Vendor Escort", or "Secured Door to Fitness Center". This last one may look like an assignable task, and if you thought this, you would be correct assuming the door was part of a defined property tour. With this one (any many other types of tasks), it really comes down to how it's setup. If the entrance to the fitness center is part of the building tour, and you wanted regular visits there with timestamps showing the dates and times a security officer was there, and you wanted to run reports showing the visit times to this checkpoint, then it's an assignable task. If instead, the task is not part of a tour, and your officers can check the door at any point during the day, then you could add it as a non-assignable task. Many tasks are not exclusive to one or the other so it's up to you to decide what works best for your location.
Add Tasks in SOVA Web:
- Navigate to Tasks > New Task
- Provide a task name
- Decide if the task is a Tour Task (assignable) or a Non-Tour Task (non-assignable)
- Is the task critical? What this means is, would others want to know about it if this task was recorded during the day at your location? If you answer yes, then set the toggle to "YES", and after, read about how to add recipients to the communication screen, so your people can receive alerts when this task is recorded.
- Are comments required? Setting this toggle to yes will require your officer to add a comment when recording that task from the web or mobile platform.
- Should the task trigger notification emails? This is usually setup to alert your engineering or maintenance team about a building defect. If you set this toggle to yes, then you can setup a distribution list of people that will receive an email when this task is recorded by one of your officers.
- Once you are ready, click Save. You can always return to this screen to edit a previous entry
TIP: When making changes to tours or tasks from the web console, be advised that these changes are not immediately seen in the mobile devices. This is because we designed SOVA Mobile to NOT require a persistent connection to the web, as often we found that our clients had WiFi dead zones at their properties, and expecting that an update was immediately available in the mobile app was impossible to guarantee. We decided on a process by which a mobile user could "Check Updates" manually every so often from SOVA Mobile, and during this update process, any previous updates done in SOVA Web would be synced down to the mobile device which had requested the update. During the initial setup of SOVA at your property, it is good practice to have your team check updates regularly until you get the system setup exactly as you want. Then a good practice might be to have your team check updates every few days or even once a week going forward.
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