Why field service workers love their iPads

Cornell University runs its own water and electrical utility for the campus and student housing, serving as many as 30,000 people when school is in session in the Ithaca, N.Y., campus. As with any utility, it experiences outages — in this case of power, water, or steam (used for heating). The usual way to deal with that was for phone operators to dial up utility managers and have them come into the office to figure out the issue, then determine the course of action. That meant delays of as much as an hour as people dropped what they were doing (or got dressed, if in the middle of the night) and drove in.

Today, Cornell still calls those managers. But since October, they’ve been signing into the utility management systems from their cellular-equipped iPads to pinpoint the issues and even remotely fix them when possible. In a pinch, they can also use their iPhones. Mechanics and technicians are issued iPads for the same reason.

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Cornell’s utility equipment provider, General Electric’s Intelligent Platforms division, has an iOS app for drilling down into the utility management system’s current data, and there’s a Web app that can control the equipment and get more detailed info than the iOS app provides, notes Bill Richards, a senior network engineer at the Cornell Utilities Department.

It’s simple, isn’t it? Provide field employees and their managers a device they can keep close at hand so they can investigate and even respond to an emergency from nearly anywhere they are. Provide Web access (protected via VPN) for those who need to go beyond the first-level information offered by the native app, which also lets them work from any computer, so they can coordinate reasonably with the range of tools similar to what they have at the office.

The iPad is the first line of response, but it’s part of a broader set of tools.

I asked Richards why have both the Web app and the iOS app. A practical reason is that the Web app came first. But he says his team continues to use it — even on the iPad — when they want to go beyond the iOS app’s capabilities. He likes the fact that the Web app replicates what the operator sees, giving managers the same view as on-site employees. And he likes that his team can essentially remote-control the utility management system from the browser.

But he also likes that the iOS app is simpler to use, providing drill-down capabilities to more easily discover what’s happening — and helps managers come to decisions more quickly. “The Web app lets you control the equipment and see more detail, such as what percent valves are open. But that’s kind of overload for the mobile app.”

Cornell’s experience shows that native and Web apps are both valuable, and you need not choose between them.

The college’s approach to issuing the iPads also shows you don’t have to go management-crazy. Users need to go through a VPN to get to the Web app and authenticate themselves in the iOS app. Employees can use the iPads for personal purposes, which helps ensure they keep them close at hand. The barriers to use are kept to a minimum.

Finally, Richards noted that Cornell had issued laptops to some people previously, mainly for issuing work orders, but managing the hardware and Windows was too much of a burden. When GE said it had an iOS app, the utility department quickly signed up to use iPads instead. “There’s no need to worry about domains and backups as you would with Windows,” he notes.

Still, Windows knowledge is a plus, at least to manage the system, because the utility management system and the back end to the Web and iOS apps run on Windows Server in virtual machines.

Luckily for Cornell, there was no legacy issue to worry about, as enterprises often encounter when they try to mobile-enable Web apps. Many older Web apps assume the use of Internet Explorer and its related proprietary technologies like ActiveX, so they do not function on iOS’s Safari, Android’s Chrome, or Safari, Chrome, or Firefox in Windows or OS X. GE’s Web app had no such dependencies, so there were no issues for Cornell to worry about. It just all worked.

Cornell’s experience is a great reminder of why the iPad has taken many businesses by storm, especially those with field forces: It provides easy access to key information and systems almost anywhere you are. And Cornell’s experience reminds us why keeping its deployment both straightforward and flexible is a good idea.

This article, “Why field service workers love their iPads,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Mobile Edge blog and follow the latest developments in mobile technology at InfoWorld.com. Follow Galen’s mobile musings on Twitter at MobileGalen. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.