> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://learn.withessential.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://learn.withessential.com/customers-and-work/jobs/send-a-job-summary.md).

# Send a Job Summary

A Job Summary is the no-login recap you share with a customer after a visit. It bundles what happened on the job — visit details, the services performed, the assets inspected, deficiencies, parts and items, photos, property files, all submitted inspection reports, the signed work acknowledgment, and any unpaid invoice with a pay link — into a single link the customer can open without signing in. It is the share-out counterpart to the Customer Portal.

You can send it from the job's task or from the "..." menu on a submitted inspection report attached to that job. Each section publishes on its own, and sending again updates the same customer link rather than creating a new one.

This is different from **Send Report** on the submitted report or in the Job task's Inspection Reports section. Send Report emails one inspection report PDF directly; Send Job Summary publishes a recap link and lets you choose from all available job sections. When a selected visit has several submitted reports, the Inspection report section includes every report PDF. The two actions are enabled separately, so a business can use either or both.

## Before you start

* **Enable Job Summaries** must be on in Settings -> Job Summaries, and your role must have inspection-report write access. This setting is independent of the [Task Documents setting for direct inspection-report email](/administration/settings/task-documents-send-and-attach-supporting-documents.md).
* A section only appears when the job actually has that content — a visit with no inspection report won't show an Inspection report section, for example.

## Send a Job Summary

1. Open the job's task and find **Quick Actions**, or open a submitted inspection report attached to the job and use its "..." menu.
2. Choose **Send Job Summary**. The send screen opens as a panel over the page — configuration on the left, a live preview of exactly what the customer sees on the right.
3. Under **Record contents**, choose which sections to include. Each row shows a one-line summary of what's inside. Toggle a section off to hold it back — held sections stay private until you publish them.
4. Check the **Message** — the short personal note that appears at the top of the record. On an unpublished draft with an empty Message, Essential may draft a starting note from the technician's information; edit it, replace it, or clear it out. See [The suggested message](#the-suggested-message) below.
5. Review **Technician notes** — the technician's visit notes, shown to the customer under your message. Edit the text, or select **Suggest** beside the heading (it opens **Suggest technician notes**) to improve the wording. The field is read-only, with a "No visit summary submitted yet" placeholder, until the technician submits their visit summary.
6. Add any **Attachments** or job photos you want to include.
7. Under **Recipients**, add who to email. Start typing to search the customer's contacts, or type and paste one or more email addresses. Contact suggestions show their roles and whether each role is Primary or Secondary for this property; primary contacts appear first. You can't publish until at least one recipient is added.
8. Choose **Publish & email update** to publish the included sections and email the recipients. Once the summary has been published at least once, **Copy link** becomes available to copy the existing share link to your clipboard — it doesn't publish anything on its own.

Publishing is additive: a section you publish becomes visible on the customer's link and stays there, and sending again updates that same link.

## Include Job custom fields, such as a PO number

Under **Record contents**, choose **Edit** to see every Job custom field alongside the section controls. Each field shows its current value and a toggle. Fields start on unless your business previously chose a different default. Toggle a field to update the summary and preview immediately.

Each toggle saves automatically and remembers that field’s default for future summaries across your business. Other existing summaries keep their own selections. On an already published summary, toggling updates the live link. Empty values are omitted from the customer view. Edit the values themselves on the Job.

The summary-link email includes the property name and address, job number, visit dates, and technicians when available. The default subject also includes the property name and street address, so recipients can identify the property from their inbox. Your business can customize the subject in [Job Summaries settings](/administration/settings/set-up-job-summaries.md).

## The suggested message

When you open the send screen on an unpublished summary that doesn't have a message yet, Essential tries to write a starting note. **Drafting…** appears beside the Message heading while it works. The draft uses the technician's visit notes and job summary question answers, plus the visit's services, selected equipment, open deficiencies, and the names of every inspection report included on the record.

This suggestion is best-effort. If it cannot be created or the record changes before it arrives, Message stays blank and you can type your own note or use **Suggest a message**.

It is ordinary text in an ordinary box — a starting point, not a decision:

* Edit any part of it, or select it all and replace it with your own words.
* Clear the box to send no message at all.
* If you had already started typing when the draft arrived, your words are kept and the draft is discarded.

Always read it before you publish. It draws on the technician's visit notes and the rest of the record's contents, and you are the one deciding what your customer should see. The live preview on the right shows exactly how it will read.

Once a summary has a message — one you wrote or one you kept — reopening the send screen leaves it exactly as you left it. While the summary is still an unpublished draft, one you deliberately left blank gets a fresh draft the next time you open it, so clear it again if you still don't want one. After you publish, the message only changes when you change it: a blank message on a published summary stays blank.

If a suggested draft is sitting in the box untouched and you then change what the record shares — hold back a section, add or remove a visit, or change the selected equipment — the draft is cleared and Essential tries to rewrite it to match. A message you have edited is yours and is never rewritten automatically.

The drafts pick up your business's voice over time. Essential looks at the messages your team has already published on past job summaries and at the wording you accepted from **Suggest a message**, then matches their length, tone, and the kinds of things you usually mention. The more summaries you send, the closer the drafts get to how your business writes. There is nothing to configure — a brand-new business simply gets a plain, factual note until it has a history to learn from.

**Suggest a message**, next to the Message heading, is the related tool for text you have already written: it rewrites your draft rather than creating one from nothing.

## What the customer sees

The customer opens the link with no login and sees a single-page record with your business's name and logo, the visit result, and whichever sections you published. When the selected visits have more than one submitted inspection report, the completion banner lists every report and its completion date.

* **Your message** — the note in the Message box, shown at the top as "Note from {your business}". Nothing appears here if you cleared it.
* **Technician notes** — the text in the Technician notes box, shown under your message with the technician's name. Nothing appears here if it's empty.
* **Visit details** — visit type, appointment date, technician, and property.
* **Arrival time**, when included — when the technician first clocked in on each selected visit, shown with the visit details in your business's timezone. It uses the clock-in time after any office corrections; travel time and removed entries don't count. When more than one technician worked the visit, it shows the earliest clock-in. The date appears next to the time only when the technician arrived on a different day than the appointment. A visit without a clock-in says **No arrival recorded**.
* **Time spent**, when included — recorded work time for each selected visit, shown with the visit details. It includes manual entries and office corrections, excludes travel and removed entries, and adds the technicians' labor time when more than one person worked. It uses recorded time, not the scheduled duration, and displays one total in hours and minutes rounded to the nearest minute. When Visit details is included, **Recorded by** identifies the people who recorded time if they differ from the assigned technician or more than one person worked. A missing clock-out is called out and its open time is excluded; a visit without recorded time says **No recorded time**.
* **Service description**, when included — service instructions, initially copied from the original visit description, with line breaks preserved. This is separate from the technician's completion notes. Blank descriptions are omitted.
* **Services performed** — each service and the asset it was performed on. Only visits that actually took place contribute: work planned on an upcoming, cancelled, or draft visit is never listed as performed, and a visit the technician marked incomplete shows only the services they recorded as done. Service history the technician recorded during the visit — a completion whose entered date is before the visit's own day, like "5-year internal last done last year" noted on an annual inspection — is kept for scheduling but never shown as work performed on this visit.
* **Parts, labor & items** — the items recorded on the visit. Like Services performed, items from a visit that hasn't happened are not shown.
* **Asset Groups** — open a group to see its assets, with any deficient ones flagged, along with that group's photos.
* **Deficiencies**, **Photos**, **Property files**, **Documents** (every submitted inspection report PDF from the selected visits and the signed work acknowledgment PDFs), and any **unpaid invoice** with a Pay button.

The record is live — it reflects the current status of the job whenever the customer opens it.

Edit **Service description** below Technician notes before saving. Each selected visit has its own textarea, prefilled with its original instructions. Choose **Save descriptions** to save your summary copy, or **Cancel** to discard edits. These edits do not change the original visit instructions. Clear a textarea and save to omit that visit’s description. Saving keeps the current inclusion choice; it does not turn the section on. On a live summary, saved edits to an already-published description appear immediately on its share link.

Arrival time, Time spent, and Service description are off by default, including for businesses already using Job Summaries. To share when the technician arrived, turn on **Arrival time** under **Record contents → Edit**. To use a summary as an office job ticket, include Time spent or Service description the same way. Review the preview before publishing. Existing shared links stay unchanged until you explicitly publish these sections. You can also set them as defaults for future summaries in [Job Summaries settings](/administration/settings/set-up-job-summaries.md). Once published, anyone with the link can see them.

If Visit details is held back, these new sections use numbered visit labels without exposing appointment dates, visit types, or technician names. Arrival time then shows the clock time only, never the date.

## Edits and shares on the job timeline

The job's timeline — and the job task's timeline, which folds in the job's events — keeps a history of the summary:

* Including or holding back a section or Job custom field, changing which visits or asset groups are covered, editing the customer message, and adding or removing an attachment each add a **Job summary updated** entry naming the change.
* Publishing adds a **Job summary shared** entry with a line for each contact and email address the summary was emailed to. Only emails that were actually delivered are recorded.

Message edits made in one sitting are grouped — expect one "customer message" entry per person per half hour, not one per keystroke.

> **Where to find it:** open the job's task -> Quick Actions -> Send Job Summary, or open a submitted inspection report attached to the job -> "..." -> Send Job Summary

## Related guides

* [Set up Job Summaries](/administration/settings/set-up-job-summaries.md)
* [Download or email an inspection report](/field-operations/inspection-reports/download-or-email-an-inspection-report.md)
* [Work acknowledgments on a job](/customers-and-work/jobs/work-acknowledgments-on-a-job.md)
* [Recurring service completions on a job](/customers-and-work/jobs/recurring-service-completions-on-a-job.md)
* [What your customers see in the Customer Portal](/administration/what-your-customers-see-in-the-customer-portal.md)


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