IFS maintenance & work order automation
IFS maintenance and work order automation closes the gap between a fault happening and a work order existing. NgageFlow listens to alarms, emails and frontline reports, lets an AI agent triage and deduplicate them, and raises the work order in IFS Cloud while the planner is still drinking coffee.
From fault to work order, the slow way
A pump starts vibrating at 06:40. The operator calls the supervisor, who emails the planner, who gets to the inbox at 09:00, looks up the equipment object in IFS, and creates a work order by 09:30. Three hours of swivel-chair relay for a record that took two minutes to type — and that is a good day, with nobody on leave.
Meanwhile the technicians find out about assignments when they next pass a terminal, status in IFS lags what is happening on the floor, and recurring faults stay invisible because the history lives in inboxes and phone calls instead of structured records.
- Fault reports arrive by phone, email and paper; work orders are created hours later
- Planners copy details between mailboxes, spreadsheets and IFS screens
- Technicians hear about assignments only when they check a terminal
- Work order status in IFS lags reality, so reports and KPIs mislead
- Recurring faults go unnoticed because the history never reaches structured data
Alarm to assigned work order, step by step
The same flow pattern works whether the signal comes from condition monitoring, a mailbox or a frontline form — only the trigger changes.
- 1
HTTP webhook or Outlook — fault signal arrives
A webhook receives alarms from condition monitoring or a SCADA gateway; an email trigger catches fault reports sent to the maintenance mailbox. Both feed the same downstream flow.
- 2
AI agent — triage the report
The agent classifies severity, identifies which asset the report is about, and writes a clean work description from a messy email or terse alarm payload.
- 3
IFS Cloud — Read Records
It looks up the equipment object in IFS Cloud and checks open work orders on the same asset, so a noisy sensor or a second phone call does not spawn a duplicate.
- 4
IFS Cloud — Create Record
A work order is created against the right equipment object with the agent’s description and suggested priority. High-impact work branches to a planner approval first.
- 5
Microsoft Teams — notify the crew
The maintenance channel — or the assigned crew’s channel — gets the work order number, asset, priority and description the moment it exists. No terminal required.
- 6
IFS Cloud — New or Updated Record trigger
A second flow watches work order status changes in IFS and closes the loop: the original requester is updated automatically, and a Google Sheets step logs completions for trend review.
Every step here is a standard piece of the platform: connectors from the 700+ integration library, the native IFS Cloud connector, and AI agents as workflow steps — assembled in the visual builder, no code required.
Agents prepare, people decide
The agent never gets blanket authority. You draw the line in the flow itself — and the flow enforces it.
What the AI agent does
- Triages severity and identifies the affected asset from messy input
- Deduplicates against open work orders before creating anything
- Drafts the work description and suggests a priority
- Keeps requesters informed as the work order moves through statuses
What people approve
- Approves high-cost work and anything requiring a shutdown
- Owns safety-critical scheduling and permit decisions
- Adjusts priorities where the agent’s suggestion needs local judgment
What changes
What maintenance teams typically see when the relay race becomes a flow:
Faults become work orders in minutes instead of hours
Duplicate work orders fall away because the flow checks before it creates
Crews are notified in Teams the moment work exists, not at the next terminal visit
Completion history accumulates as structured data, making recurring faults visible
Work order automation pairs naturally with frontline capture. NgageEase gives technicians offline-ready mobile forms for fault reports and checklists that feed these flows, and EX10’s IFS consultants help shape the maintenance process around them.
Start from a template
- Alarm webhook to IFS work order
- Work order status updates to Teams
- Fault report triage with an AI agent
IFS maintenance & work order automation: questions, answered
Can NgageFlow create work orders in IFS Cloud automatically?
Yes. The native IFS Cloud connector creates work order records against the correct equipment object, with the description and priority prepared by the AI agent. You decide which severities flow straight through and which pause for planner approval.
How does it avoid duplicate work orders from noisy signals?
Before creating anything, the flow queries IFS Cloud for open work orders on the same asset. If one exists, the agent appends context to the existing record path instead of raising a new one — so a chattering sensor produces one work order, not forty.
Does the requester find out when the work is done?
Yes. A flow built on the New or Updated Record trigger watches work order status in IFS and notifies the original requester automatically — by email or Teams — at the milestones you choose.
Other flows IFS teams build first
See work order automation on your IFS
Book a demo against a real maintenance scenario, or reserve an early-access pilot for your site.