Audience: administrators and service managers who set up how work flows through Fixably.

Every order in Fixably follows three ideas: the queue it belongs to, the status it's on, and the tasks your team answers along the way. Get these three right and the rest of Fixably falls into place. This article explains what each one does and how they fit together. When you're ready to set them up, follow the links to the step-by-step guides.

Prefer to watch? Here's a 4-minute video walkthrough.

The big picture

• A queue is a lane for one kind of work, such as iPhone, iPad, Mac or audio.
• Each queue has statuses: the steps an order moves through, for example In queue, In repair and Ready for pickup.
• Along the way there are tasks: questions your team answers, such as "Is Find My switched off?" or "Has the customer got a backup?"

You set up all three once, in System Settings. Child queues inherit from their parent queue, so you don't have to repeat yourself.

Queues: a lane for each kind of work

You'll find queues in System Settings, under Orders and workflow > Queues. Queues are arranged as a tree. In this example shop, Mac and iOS are the main lanes. Notebook and Desktop sit under Mac, and iPad, iPhone, Apple TV and Apple Watch sit under iOS. There are also separate queues for audio, sales orders and mail-in repairs.

A queue itself is simple: a name, a description and the parent queue it sits under. The parent is what matters. Statuses, tasks and shortcuts flow down from it. So the iPhone queue gets everything the iOS queue has, plus anything you add just for iPhone.

When a device is checked in, Fixably picks the queue from the device type, so most of the time nobody has to choose.

Set up queues: How do I set up Queues?

Statuses: the steps an order moves through

You'll find statuses in System Settings under Order statuses. Pick a queue at the top of the page to see its statuses.

Every status has two parts:

• The name is the words your team sees, for example "Assigned to Technician".
• The type is what Fixably understands, for example Processing, Parts arrived or Picked up. The type drives the order lists, the timers and the automations.

The rule of thumb: the name is for your team, the type is for Fixably. Call a status whatever matches how your shop talks, but give it the right type.

You can also set a Yellow limit and a Red limit on a status, in hours. When an order has been on that status too long, it changes color in the order lists, so you notice before the customer does.

Set up statuses: How do I set up Order Statuses?

Tasks: the questions answered along the way

You'll find tasks in System Settings under Tasks. A task is a question, and it comes in a few types: Yes / No, Text, Select (a choice from a list) and Password, for things like device passcodes.

Open a task to see which queues it applies to. Tick a parent queue such as iOS, and every child queue asks the question too. Tick only iPhone, and it stays in the iPhone queue.

Tasks can also be asked of customers in the booking portal, if you set them up for it.

Set up tasks: How do I create a Task?

How it comes together on an order

Say a customer in Dallas drops off an iPhone with a cracked screen:

Tips for setting up

• Keep queues few. Three or four queues is plenty. If two kinds of work differ only in their steps, that's a status, not a new queue.
• Type first, name second. Give every status the right type, then name it the way your team talks.
• Only ask what people forget. Add a task only for things like passcodes, backups and Find My.

Related articles

• How do I set up Queues?
• How do I set up Order Statuses?
• How do I create a Task?
• How does highlighting in an Order List work?
• Order Lists User Guide