Career Chronicles
UpKeep: Year in Review (2019)
Focusing on Customer Needs and Long-Term System Health
In 2019, UpKeep delivered over 2,397 pieces of value to our customers in the US, UK, Canada, China, Australia, South Africa, Germany, France, Kuwait, UAE, Japan, Iceland, Brazil, and beyond. We’ve seen our user base grow by +105% and engagement soar to an all-time high.
We provided our customers with everything from minor usability improvements to major features and security overhauls that have helped them do their work better and have the peace of mind they deserve, respectively.
Every single task our team worked on in 2019 either solved a customer pain point or delivered on a customer need. We stayed laser-focused on making our customers happy, which is reflected in the incredible growth we’ve seen Year over Year on all fronts.
THANK YOU! 🙏🏼🚀🎉
Looking back on 2019, there were so many highlights worth mentioning, but a few truly stood out. But before we dig into that, let’s revisit the reason UpKeep exists, and why we, her guardians, come into work every day:
At UpKeep, we believe in making the lives of the underserved labor around the world better through technology.
Our efforts to drive our purpose forward over the past 12 months were focused in three big areas:
- Innovation: Sensors was the biggest innovation we tested last year that’s designed to directly improve the lives of technicians and how they go about doing their job. This is an example of how our purpose drives our actions. More on Sensors below.
- User Experience: We focused on the reduction of friction. We started by improving the usability and performance of our key flows. This also included better, more streamlined security.
- Tech Maturity: Managing technical debt before it’s gotten too crippling and implementing better automation and quality control where possible.
Innovation
One of UpKeep’s biggest values is maximizing asset uptime with preventative and predictive maintenance protocols. Rolling out Sensors was our way of taking that proposition to the next level. Sensors are connected devices in the Internet of Things (IoT) realm that monitor assets in real-time and trigger an appropriate workflow should an asset reading (e.g. temperature, vibration, voltage, etc) crosses a certain threshold.
We launched Sensors as a pilot in early October of 2019 with two of our customers. In just the first month of installation, one of our customers uncovered some longstanding maintenance issues. Sensors, in effect, was able to identify patterns that humans couldn’t even with scheduled maintenance.
Sensors, by their very nature, are the best tool for accurate predictive maintenance. Since our launch, we’ve been overwhelmed by the demand for this new product. If you’re interested, you can check it out here.
User Experience
We focused here on improving UpKeep’s usability and performance to ensure the highest quality user experience for anyone using our product. This ranges from bug fixes and minor usability improvements to full-fledged new features! A ton of work was poured into this area, and the following are highlights:
Linking work orders––Users now have the ability to link their work orders! This is huge for giving technicians and administrators visibility into all of the work orders that are connected and their exact relation to one another. Linking work orders enables our users to identify blockers, related issues, duplicates, and subtasks.
Improved automated workflows — Added multiple “AND” conditions to the Automated Workflow feature based on customer feedback.
Automated reports — Generating reports, trends, and insights based on the data collected from work orders.
Checklists from automated workflows––Users can now automate assigning checklists to work orders.
Work order column view (aka Swim Lanes) — This view (see below) shows all existing work orders by the user assigned, and lists status as a column. To update the status of a work order, simply drag and drop the work order into the relevant column. This new visual representation of the work order list helps teams view all of the tasks at hand and get a better understanding of their backlog so they can prioritize, organize, and assign the tasks appropriately.
Mentions in Work Order Updates––UpKeepers can now @mention others in the Updates section of any work order. This new feature enables UpKeepers with faster and more efficient communication amongst their teams. Make sure no one misses a beat with our newest form of communication!
Customize Required Fields in Work Order Forms —Admins now have the ability to establish required fields when work orders are being created under their account. Not only can admins set required fields, but they can also enforce the way work orders are submitted by hiding any fields that are irrelevant to their team’s workflow.
Floor Plans — UpKeep users can now add multiple floor plans to any or all locations listed under their account. Once a floor plan has been added, existing assets can be added as mapping points so the viewer can see where each asset is located within a facility and identify the exact location of the asset they have been assigned to work on. Custom mapping points can also be added to each floor plan, which enables our users to identify specific areas, objects, or provide additional information necessary to provide guidance through a facility.
Cost Tracking––Enhanced cost tracking in for work orders by adding the ability to add additional costs and cost categories.
Itemized Cost & Time Reporting–– The ability to drill down into the data they are receiving regarding time and cost by implementing itemized reporting for time and cost.
Export downtime logs––Users can now access their asset downtime data in an Excel format––which gives them a full look into their downtime per asset and the freedom to apply formulas, run calculations, and analyze their data in any way they feel fit.
Cloning checklists––In many cases, checklists will be very similar to one another with only a few unique tasks. Without the ability to duplicate checklists, UpKeepers would need to create each workflow from the very beginning and enter each item multiple times. Say goodbye to the long days of creating checklists! UpKeepers can cut that time in half by utilizing the new “Duplicate” feature.
Set of parts —Creating a set of parts allows users to group parts in their inventory so they can easily be added to an asset or work order with just one click.
Asset downtime edits — Users can now edit or delete their asset downtime entries! This new feature enables UpKeepers to enforce data integrity and gives them the peace of mind that if a mistake has been made, it can be taken back!
Purchase order improvements — Added new and improved filtering for purchase orders that will allow UpKeep users to search their purchase orders by criteria such as vendors, total cost, users assigned, and many more! In addition, the purchase order creation process got a makeover to boot!
UI improvements in iOS and Android apps — App users noticed a new look when they navigate to their Work Order, Requests, Assets, Locations, and People and Teams pages. These new updates were designed to help our users easily navigate their lists and give them more information at a single glance.
Meter readings in work orders––Added meter readings as a form item type that can be included in work orders!
Batch download of PDFs––when selecting multiple work orders on the work order list page, users will have the option to batch download all selected work orders. Users can decide to export the selected PDFs with or without Update Notes.
Webhooks––When extracting data out of a system, event-driven webhooks are a godsend. It allows users to retrieve data when a condition in the system is met.
Work Order timer––Work order Timer has a new look on iOS and Android apps and now has itemized time. Users can manually add time to a work order and categorize their time appropriately.
Invoices as files––UpKeep users can now save invoices as a file to their respective work orders. Adding newly created invoices to the relevant work orders helps administrators stay organized and retain the invoices for their records within UpKeep and for future reference.
SSO improvements––We have enabled our users with the ability to log in natively. This allows SSO users to log into their UpKeep account with both SSO and a username and password. We have also made an update within SSO settings, which will update user profile fields each time a user logs in. This facilitates a two-sync between the UpKeep app and your identity provider.
Partially fulfilled purchase orders––UpKeepers can mark their Purchase Orders as partially fulfilled as well as have the ability to identify those orders which still have outstanding fulfillments.
Estimated duration on pending requests––UpKeep admins can now enter the estimated duration for a work order request while it is still pending. Once approved, the estimated duration will be included on the work order.
Countless improvements!––In addition to all of the above, there were countless other improvements delivered to our customers without much fanfare.
Tech Maturity
Speed — Improving the speed of our application was a paramount goal for us in 2019. We made huge strides in that effort, with many more to come in 2020. The application should feel faster to our users.
Automation — Releasing quality code to production in a timely fashion is something we care a great deal about. Adding proper automation processes to our development, quality assurance, and deployment practices made a massive difference in increasing our confidence in the codebase we release to our customers every day.
Security — Improving security is something we take very seriously. Many improvements have been deployed across all aspects of our tech stack, and many more are coming in 2020.
Technical debt––Managing technical debt is something every software company has to deal with. It’s the price everyone pays for writing and growing code. Managing technical debt takes time and effort, but is critical in ensuring the long-term health of the product.
The UpKeep Platform
In addition to the myriad of features and value our core application offers our customers, we believe there’s more that can be done with our technology and your data. This is why we launched webhooks in 2019 in addition to our REST APIs.
Both webhooks and APIs provide access to data. Webhooks push data out when a predefined condition or event is met. APIs can be pulled for data. Both systems are designed to provide a comprehensive and versatile way to access data at UpKeep. This allows our customers to create integrations and new features themselves using their own data. This unlocks innovations that many of our creatives customers are already creating!
Looking Ahead
2020 promises to be a very exciting year! We’ll continue focusing on innovation, user experience, and tech maturity. A ton of great improvements and new innovations await our customers in this new decade!
Stay tuned ☺️🚀🎉
