Activities

Activities are the catalogue entries that describe what your crews do, the way resources describe what your crews use. A resource is a metre of cable or a junction box; an activity is pulling that cable, splicing that fibre, excavating a trench, or inspecting a span. Define an activity once and it becomes available to pick on any work order, measured in its own units (splices, metres, hours, spans).

Activities were introduced in the §193 work-model restructure as a first-class registry, symmetric to resources. Before, the work a crew performed lived only as free text on each work order — impossible to total, compare, or price. Now the type of work is a structured, reusable record.

Where Activities Fit

Job  (planned unit of work — geometry + what is needed)
  ├── Resources   → the materials/equipment/labour consumed   (catalogue: Resources)
  └── Work Order  (assignment of the job to a crew)
        └── Activity line  → the work performed              (catalogue: Activities)

A resource answers “what materials does this work consume?” and lives on the job as a resource line. An activity answers “what work is being done?” and lives on the work order as its activity line — either a registered activity from this catalogue, or an ad-hoc one-off typed in directly.

Both are optional. A job does not have to declare any resources, and a work order does not have to name a registered activity. Use them when structured tracking earns its keep; skip them for simple or one-off work.

Activity Fields

Basic Information

• Name — Descriptive work type (e.g., "Fusion splice", "Pull fibre", "Directional bore")
• Description — Method notes, acceptance criteria, or safety callouts
• Units of Measure — The units this activity can be tracked in, with one marked as the default (e.g., splices, metres, hours, spans)

Organisation

• Tags — Free-form labels for filtering and grouping (e.g., "fibre", "civil", "QA")
• Properties — Arbitrary key/value metadata, the same flexible bag features and resources carry
• Attachments — Reference files: method statements, spec sheets, photos of the expected result

Activities deliberately carry no inventory, no stock, and no pickup policy — those belong to resources. An activity is a definition of work, not a thing you hold. That is the whole point of splitting the two registries: materials flow through inventory; work flows through reports and payment.

Units of Measure

Like resources, activities use the unified units model: a single Units list where each entry has a name and one is marked primary (the default shown when the activity is picked). Choose units that match how the work is naturally counted and paid:

When a work order picks the activity, the planner enters a volume in one of these units (the Activity Volume and Activity UOM on the work order). That structured pair is what makes activity work totalable across a project and feedable into payment calculations — unlike the old free-text description.

Registered vs Ad-Hoc Activities

A work order's activity line can be filled two ways:

• Registered — pick an activity from this catalogue. Reusable, consistent naming, rolls up cleanly across work orders and projects. Use for any work type you do more than once.
• Ad-hoc — type a one-off activity directly on the work order without creating a catalogue entry. Use for genuinely unique or emergency work that will never recur.

The guidance mirrors resources: if you find yourself typing the same ad-hoc activity repeatedly, promote it to a registered activity so it can be totalled and priced.

Creating Activities

Access Required: activitiesCreate admin right

Workflow:

1. Navigate to administration → Activities
2. Click Add Activity
3. Fill basic information (name, description)
4. Add the units of measure and mark one primary
5. Tag and attach reference files if useful
6. Save

Best Practices:

• Name by the verb of the work ("Splice", "Pull", "Bore", "Inspect") so the catalogue reads as a list of actions
• Keep units to the few that crews actually report in — one primary, a couple of alternates at most
• Tag by discipline (fibre / civil / QA) so planners can filter the picker quickly
• Reach for ad-hoc only for truly one-off work; promote anything recurring

Activity Usage

Activities appear in:

• Work Orders — the structured activity line (registered activity or ad-hoc) plus its volume and unit
• Reports — the work a crew records against the assigned activity
• Project roll-ups — totals of like activities across all the project's work orders
• Payment — activity volume × rate, where work (not just materials) drives pay

Activities do not touch inventory. They define and total the work itself; resources, stock items, and transactions handle the materials that work consumes.