Making Blank Paperwork Use Only Job Assets

This article covers how to make blank paperwork populate Assets that are only associated with a specific Job onto your fillable form.

Using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC (or other PDF editors), it is possible to add custom metadata directly onto the PDF document itself that will make this possible. Use the method below in conjunction with blank paperwork rules to automate forms further. 

If set up correctly, blank paperwork will be pre-filled in ServiceTrade with information about all Assets at the Location being serviced.  This is advantageous in situations where the entire list of Assets needs to be available to the Technician (for instance, when an inspection is being performed.)

It is less useful in situations where a small set of Assets, or even a single Asset, is being Serviced (for instance, a Service call or repair.) In this instance, you may want to use 'onlyJobAssets'.

When to Use 'onlyJobAssets'

If you choose to use only the Job-associated Assets, the only Asset data that will be pre-filled onto your paperwork will be the Assets associated with Services that are to be performed on the Job.

• It is still possible to use subAssets on your paperwork; however, only the subAssets that are children of the Assets associated with the Job are available.
  
  
• For example: Without OnlyJobAssets, the fillable field named "servicetrade_job_assets-alarm-1-manufacturer" would be filled with the manufacturer name of the first alarm system on the Job's Location.  
  However, if the blank paperwork file is configured to use only the Job's Assets, then this fillable field will be filled with the manufacturer name of the first alarm system associated with a Service on the Job.

How To Add 'onlyJobAssets' Metadata

1. Open the PDF you want to add the custom metadata in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC (or possibly other PDF editors.)
2. Click File.
3. Then click Properties to open the Document Properties Menu.
4. Click the Custom tab.
   
   The image above shows the "Custom" tab open in the PDF Properties modal window. For onlyJobAssets to work correctly, you need to enter rules in both the Name and Value custom fields without any punctuation (specifically, do not include the colons, commas, or double quotes that eventually appear in the JSON metadata. Metadata rules will function correctly if you enter your custom field values without punctuation. If you add any punctuation, it will appear redundantly in the JSON metadata and will not work correctly).
5. In the Name field enter "onlyJobAssets"
6. In the Value field you can either enter "0" or "1", depending on what you want the paperwork to do. See below rules:

Value is 0 or 1

• If this value is 0, then all active Assets on the Job’s Location will be used.
• If this value is 1, then only the Assets associated with active Services on the Job will be used (regardless of the status of the Asset – an inactive Asset associated with an active Service will be returned.)

Important Notes

• ServiceTrade does not support Adobe Acrobat DC, if you have questions about that software please reach out to their Customer Support.
  
  
• The fillable Asset field names should always be prefixed with ‘Servicetrade_job_assets’, regardless of the value of onlyJobAssets.
  That is, even if 'onlyJobAsset' value is 0 and all active Location Assets are prefilled, the field names for those Assets still start with "Servicetrade_job_assets".
  
  
• This setting affects the set of Assets that are considered by repeatAsset. For more information about making blank paperwork repeat dynamically, please see this support article.
  
  

• If you have additional questions about us providing support to add these fillable fields and metadata to your existing PDF forms, please reach out to our Customer Support or your Account Manager to discuss using Professional Services.

For more information about editing PDF file metadata, please see this support article.