Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Platform version 5.60.4 release

The OnForce team will be releasing an update to the platform tonight. Here’s what’s new: Add rich formatting to work order details

Are you making it easy to understand the requirements of your work? Are you providing clear and easy-to-follow instructions? In a fast-paced on-site environment, how quickly can service professionals extract important information from your job description?

As a service buyer, improving the readability of your work orders helps the service professionals you work with to quickly and completely understand job requirements and instructions — saving time on site, reducing errors and missed steps, and leading to better overall service.

OnForce service buyers can now apply rich formatting to their work order description, instructions, and terms of agreement fields, making the scope of work and service instructions easier to read, understand, and follow. With our easy-to-use formatting toolbar, you can add any of the following formatting and styling options to your work order text:

  • Bold Italics
  • Numbered lists 
  • Bulleted lists 
  • Horizontal rules 


Some tips for improving work order readability:

Avoid using all capital letters

Part of the way our brains make sense of printed text is by recognizing letter shapes. Because capitalized letters are all the same height, we actually have to work harder to distinguish between them. A study in the American Journal of Psychological Research concluded that using capital letters for emphasis actually decreases reading comprehension. What to do instead: Use bold or italics to emphasize important details and highlight critical steps or procedures. Break up large blocks of text

Presenting job details in large blocks of text increases the amount of time required to read and decreases comprehension and retention. It’s much easier for our brains to assign meaning to what we read when visual characteristics, such as lists and spacing, are used to help us understand how the information is organized. What to do instead: Use section headings, spacing, and horizontal rules to organize your work order into smaller, more manageable sections. For example, maybe you want to provide instructions for what a Pro should do prior to going on site, while they’re on site, and when they are closing out the job.

Want more help?

Our support and account management teams are here to help you if you need pointers on how to structure an effective, easy-to-read work order.

Reference: OnForce Blog

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