Mobile Workforce is an intelligent wireless mobile application that lets managers and mobile workers plan, execute, monitor, and control mobile operations in real-time. Mobile Workforce is designed to manage tasks, the people assigned to perform them, and the resources needed to complete them. Mobile Workforce streamlines the end-to-end business process of delivering mobile operations by supporting the following functions:

• Task Creation - Tasks can be described along a variety of dimensions, including the customer, location, desired schedule, deliverables, and procedures to be followed.
   
• Task Planning - Managers can assign people to tasks, schedule their staff’s work efforts, reserve resources and order parts needed for a task, and modify plans to address changes.
   
• Task Execution - Workers can view their schedule, items needed for the day’s tasks, track their actual work effort and progress, view procedures, and create issues and change orders.
   
• Task Monitoring – Managers can view the status of ongoing tasks, their staff, any unresolved critical issues, and any orders they have placed for resources or parts.
   
• Task Control – Managers can redirect staff and resources to meet objectives, to handle critical issues, and to address any changes that occur in new or existing tasks.
   
• Task Communication – Mobile workers, managers, and their support staff can all communicate in the Real-time Message Center about issues and change requests.

Mobile Alerts and the Common Operating Picture

Most uniquely, Mobile Workforce automatically maintains a real-time “common operating picture” of an organization’s operations in its Mobile Operations Data Grid. Any manager or executive with the appropriate security privileges can view the state of global operations (or any aspect of a single task) from a wireless PDA, anytime, anywhere. Most importantly, Mobile Worker sends users a Mobile Alert in real-time when the state of mobile operations matches conditions specified by a user, which are evaluated with each data update.