Maintenance Triage & Dispatch

Maintenance Triage & Dispatch

24/7 maintenance triage that tells a gas leak from a squeaky hinge — on the call. It logs the work order, dispatches the on-call vendor for life-safety, and schedules the rest.

Built on the Telenow App Platform as a pure declarative app: the data model, the agent tools, the PMS unit hook, the confirmation workflow, the inbound triage agent, and the escalation knowledge base all run on-platform. No external server.

Maintenance Triage & Dispatch is an inbound-first app — you point your published 24/7 maintenance number at the bundled agent, and every tenant call is answered, classified, logged, and routed automatically, around the clock.

The problem (and the number)

Most property managers hand after-hours calls to an answering service that only takes a message — a note that a human reads hours later. That is exactly when the costly calls come in. A misrouted emergency is the biggest liability a manager carries: a gas leak, an active flood, sewage backup, or no heat in freezing weather left to sit overnight turns a same-day fix into a habitability claim, water damage across multiple units, and an emergency vendor call-out at a steep after-hours premium. Meanwhile genuinely cosmetic requests get dispatched at emergency rates because nobody triaged them. Industry maintenance data consistently puts emergency / after-hours call-outs at 2–3× the cost of a scheduled visit, and water damage alone is one of the largest single sources of property-insurance loss.

Maintenance Triage & Dispatch answers on the first ring, decides life-safety vs urgent vs cosmetic against a written escalation policy, and acts on it immediately — dispatch the on-call vendor and transfer for an emergency, schedule the right trade for everything else.

How it works

Tenant calls the 24/7 maintenance number
        │
        ▼
Maintenance Triage Agent (inbound, deterministic flow)
  greet + gather (unit, issue, access)  ──►  find_unit  (confirm property/address)
        │
        ▼
  classify  (extract → category, grounded in the escalation KB)
        │
        ├─ life_safety ─►  create_work_order ─► dispatch_emergency (status: dispatched)
        │                                        └─► TRANSFER to {{settings.oncall_number}}
        │
        └─ urgent / cosmetic ─►  create_work_order ─► schedule_routine (status: scheduled)
        │
        ▼
  object.work_order.created  ─►  dispatch_confirm workflow
                                 └─ send-message {{settings.wa_channel}} → tenant confirmation

  Unit roster kept fresh out-of-band:  PMS  ──(unit webhook)──►  pms_units hook ──► unit (dedupe on unit_no)

Everything the agent does on the call updates the same work_order rows you see on the dashboard — and the dashboard's Call now button dials the tenant back through the same agent and tools.

Agent tools (used mid-call — all declarative)

The bundled Maintenance Triage Agent is a deterministic multi-context flow: greet & gather → a find_unit tool node → an extract classify node → an equation branch that either dispatches + transfers a life-safety emergency or schedules a routine job. STT/TTS default to Deepgram + ElevenLabs (English).

Dashboard pages

• Maintenance Triage & Dispatch (dashboard) — KPI tiles (open work orders, life-safety open with an SLA-at-risk flag, dispatched today, average open age as a first-response proxy, resolved), a by-category breakdown with life-safety highlighted, a status pipeline, and recent work orders. Also powers the platform dashboard_widget slot in a compact form.
• Work Orders — the live queue with category + status badges and a plain-language triage outcome per row; filter by category/status, search, and Call now to call a tenant back through the triage agent (passes unit/issue/category context variables). Life-safety orders sort to the top and are highlighted.
• Vendors — your trade roster with an on-call indicator (plumbing, electrical, HVAC, general…).
• Setup — a configuration checklist, one-click Create dispatch agent, the on-call transfer-number caveat, and the inbound-number + PMS wiring steps.

Knowledge base

escalation-policy ships four real documents the agent classifies against: life-safety emergencies — dispatch now, urgent vs cosmetic — how to tell them apart, vendor dispatch policy, and tenant safety script & access details.

Install & post-install wiring

1. Install Maintenance Triage & Dispatch into your org.
2. Open Setup → Create dispatch agent (builds the bundled inbound agent, auto-wired to the tools + KB).
3. Copy the new agent's ID into the app's Dispatch agent ID setting (dispatch_agent_id).
4. Set the on-call transfer number. The agent ships with a blank transfer destination on install — open its “Transfer to on-call” node and paste your real on-call number, and set the same number in the On-call maintenance number setting (oncall_number). Until this is done, a life-safety emergency transfer has nowhere to ring.
5. Bind your 24/7 maintenance phone number to the dispatch agent so every tenant call is answered and triaged (this is an inbound app).
6. (Optional) Set WhatsApp channel ID (wa_channel) so dispatch_confirm texts tenants a confirmation the moment a work order is logged.
7. (Optional) Point your PMS unit created/updated webhook at the pms_units inbound hook (verified with x-pms-signature, deduped on unit_no) to keep the unit roster fresh.

Settings

Bulk dialing your backlog

The real-time path (inbound call → triage → dispatch/schedule) covers live calls. To sweep a backlog of open work orders with outbound follow-up calls, use the app-key campaign API:

POST /api/app-campaigns
{ "agentId": "<dispatch agent id>",
  "targetQuery": { "status": "new" },      // over the `work_order` object
  "result": { ... write-back ... } }

Monetization

Maintenance Triage & Dispatch is billed per unit, per month — a flat rate for every occupied unit under 24/7 coverage, regardless of call volume. That maps cleanly to how property managers already budget maintenance, scales with the portfolio, and is trivially cheaper than a single misrouted after-hours emergency. The dashboard surfaces the value directly: emergencies dispatched on time, routine jobs kept off emergency rates, and average first-response age per unit.

Changelog

1.1.0 — 2026-07-12

• Renamed to Maintenance Triage & Dispatch (business-friendly) with a marketplace icon.
• Added real UI screenshots (dashboard + key pages).
• Verified end-to-end loop closure: trigger → workflow → call → agent tools → write-back → dashboard.

1.0.0

• Initial release.
• Data model: work_order object (tenant, phone, unit, issue, category, access details, status, created_at) with open / life_safety / unassigned saved views; vendor object (name, phone, trade, on_call) with an on_call view; unit object (unit_no, address, property).
• Agent tools (declarative): find_unit, create_work_order, classify_order, dispatch_emergency, schedule_routine, resolve_order.
• Bundled agent: Maintenance Triage Agent — a 24/7 inbound, deterministic multi-context flow (greet & gather → find_unit lookup → extract classify → equation branch that dispatches + transfers a life-safety emergency to the on-call number, or schedules a routine job) auto-wired to the tools and the escalation knowledge base.
• Knowledge base: escalation-policy — life-safety emergencies, urgent vs cosmetic, vendor dispatch policy, and the tenant safety script.
• Automation: pms_units inbound webhook (HMAC-verified via x-pms-signature, dedupe on unit_no) to keep the unit roster fresh; dispatch_confirm workflow (WhatsApp the tenant a confirmation the moment a work order is created).
• Dashboard UI: KPI tiles (open, life-safety open with SLA-at-risk flag, dispatched today, average open age, resolved), a by-category breakdown with life-safety highlighted, a status pipeline, and recent work orders; also renders into the dashboard_widget slot in compact form.
• Work Orders page: category + status filters, search, life-safety-first sorting with highlight, a per-row triage outcome, and per-order Call now (passes work-order context variables to the agent).
• Vendors page: trade roster with on-call indicator and coverage KPIs.
• Setup page: configuration checklist, one-click Create dispatch agent, the blank-on-install transfer-number caveat, and the inbound-number + PMS wiring steps.
• Self-seed: a fresh install auto-loads three units, three vendors, and six realistic work orders across every category and status (removable) so the dashboard is populated on first open.
• Monetization: per-unit, per-month.