Configure Technician App behavior
The Technician App page organizes mobile settings into General, Scheduling, Job summary, Notifications, and Documents tabs. Use General for photo, inspection report, and contact behavior; Scheduling for schedule access, backlog scheduling, and missed visits; and the remaining tabs for their named workflows.
Where to find it: Settings -> Team -> Technician App
Before you start
The page appears in Settings for anyone whose role has setup/admin access to a Settings area. If it's missing from your menu, ask an administrator to update your role or make the change for you.
Days in the past technicians can see
On the Scheduling tab, under Schedule, set how many days before today technicians can browse in the mobile app's Visits (Day, Week, and Month) and Reports tabs:
0 (the default) - technicians see today onward only in both tabs.
A number of days - technicians can go back that many days. For example, 14 lets a technician reopen any visit from the past two weeks.
No limit - check No limit — technicians can see the full history to remove the restriction entirely.
Reports are included by the date of the technician's assigned visit, regardless of when the report was created. Upcoming assigned visits are included too.
Opening a past visit lets a technician work it like any other visit: review it, use On My Way and Clock In / Clock Out, and add or correct its visit summary. Resubmitting a summary updates the visit's existing Jobs task in place - it never creates a duplicate task. Clock times record the moment the technician taps (not the visit's original date), the automatic 24-hour clock-out still applies, and an On My Way tap notifies the customer the same way it does for a current visit. With the setting at 0, past visits stay read-only as before.
Require photo names
On the General tab, under Photo uploads, turn Require photo names on or off:
On - a technician must enter a name before saving each job, property, or asset photo taken in the mobile app. Here asset photo is the screen's wording for a photo attached to an asset group, not an individual asset.
Off - the photo's filename is filled in automatically, and the technician can still replace it.
The same rule applies to multi-photo uploads. With Require photo names on, every row in Review photos needs a name before the batch can be saved. With it off, Essential pre-fills each photo's original filename and lets the technician keep or replace it.
Swipe to pass or fail assets
On the General tab, under Inspection reports, turn Swipe to pass or fail assets on or off. This is opt-in and off by default. When it's on, technicians can swipe an asset right to pass it or left to fail it directly from an inspection report's asset list, without opening the asset first. Failing opens a form to log the deficiency (description, notes, photos). The gesture only works on asset lists whose report definition has Bulk Pass questions configured - the same setup that shows the bulk Pass button.
Add and edit contacts
On the General tab, under Contacts, turn Add and edit contacts on to let technicians manage the visit customer's contacts. This setting is off by default, so existing businesses keep the read-only visit-contact experience.
When it is on, a technician assigned to a visit can open Contacts there to:
See every contact for the customer, including contacts that are not on the visit.
Create a contact for the customer with customer-level roles or roles for the current property.
Edit any customer contact's name, title, email, phone numbers, and roles at either scope.
A new contact needs at least one customer-level or current-property role before it can be saved. These changes update the shared customer contact record, so the office sees the same details and roles. They do not change which contacts are attached to the visit.
Job Summary Statuses
At the top of the Job summary tab, the read-only Job Summary Statuses card lists the Job Status choices technicians see when they close out a visit. These come from your Jobs task folders (Settings -> Work Management -> Tasks -> Jobs tab) — rename or add a close-out folder there to change what shows up here.
Preselect the Job Status
Also on the Job summary tab, turn Preselect the Job Status on so the Job Status dropdown on the mobile job summary starts on the first close-out folder (for example, "Job Complete (Ready to Invoice)," or whatever you renamed it to). When it's off, the dropdown starts empty and the technician must pick a status.
Require visit notes
On the Job summary tab, turn Require visit notes on when technicians must enter Visit Notes before they can submit a job summary. This is a required-field gate, not a default value: Essential marks the field required and blocks submission until the technician enters a note.
Record deficiencies
On the Job summary tab, turn Record deficiencies on to add a Deficiencies section to the mobile job summary. This is opt-in and off by default. When it's on, a technician can record one or more deficiencies found on the visit without filling out an inspection report — for each one they pick the asset group (or an asset group type not yet set up on the property, which Essential creates on submit), optionally the asset, a customer-facing description, optional internal notes, and photos.
Submitting the summary creates a Deficiencies task on the Tasks page for each asset group the recorded deficiencies belong to — the same task the office gets from Create a deficiency task. Each deficiency is tracked and also appears on the Deficiencies tabs of the job, the property, and the asset group. Deficiency photos are saved with the job's files. Resubmitting a summary later only adds any new deficiencies the technician records then; the ones already filed stay on their tasks.
Save your changes
Changes do not apply until you select Save. If you navigate away with an unsaved change, Essential warns you first. Technicians may need to reopen the mobile app before a change takes effect.
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