Seasonal checklists

Every trail organization has work that comes round every year — the spring opening, the fall close-down, the sweep before a race. A seasonal checklist is that list written down once, so it stops living in one person's head and starts being something a crew can pick up and work through.

Writing the list

Maintenance → Seasonal Checklists → New checklist. Give it a name, and a season if it has one — the season is a label, not a schedule. Nothing starts itself on a date; an empty sweep appearing every April whether or not anybody went out is how a team learns to close them without reading.

Then Edit items and add the lines. Each one has a label ("Clear the drainage"), an optional note saying what done means, and — the part that makes this more than a to-do list — how far it spreads:

• Once for the whole sweep — one line, ticked once. "Check the gate lock."
• Once per trail — becomes one line per trail in the sweep. "Clear the drainage" on a system with forty trails is forty things to check, and this is the only way to hand that over half-finished and have it mean anything.
• Once per structure — the same, over bridges, gates and signs. You can narrow it to one kind, so "check the deck boards" spreads over your bridges and not over every sign.

Writing the list needs the Triage maintenance reports permission. Working through one does not — see below.

Starting a sweep

Start a sweep takes a copy of the list as it stands today and opens it as this year's work. Name it (it suggests the checklist's name and the year) and choose whether it covers everything or one network.

Two things about that copy are worth knowing before you rely on it.

It keeps the wording it was started with. Rewording an item next winter changes what the next sweep asks for and nothing about what this one recorded. A record that changes under you afterwards is not a record — and this is the sort of record somebody may be reading a year later to establish what was checked and when.

The rows are fixed at the moment you start. A per-trail item expands over the trails that exist right now. A trail added in June does not appear in April's sweep: a finished sweep that quietly becomes unfinished, with progress running backwards, is worse than one that describes the ground as it stood when it was walked.

Working through it

The dashboard has the whole list on one page. The field app has it under Checklists on the home screen, one row at a time with three buttons each.

Anyone on the team can tick a row. Writing the list is a manager's job and walking it is the crew's, and a sweep only two people can answer anything on is a sweep that does not get done.

• Done — checked, and it is fine.
• Not needed — you looked, and it does not apply this year. The gate is already off its hinges and being rebuilt; the trail is closed. This is an answer, not a gap, and the sweep counts it as settled.
• Needs work — you looked, and it is not right.

You can add a note to any row before answering it, and photos from the field app.

What "Needs work" does

Marking a row Needs work files a maintenance item for it and links the two, so the thing you found is in the queue before you have walked to the next one. The item carries your note and your photographs, is typed as coming from a checklist, and names what and where — "Boulder Creek Connector — Clear the drainage".

Answering the same row again updates that item rather than filing a second. Changing your mind and marking the row Done afterwards unlinks it and leaves the item alone — by then somebody may have triaged it, commented on it, or fixed it, and a checklist row is not the authority on work that has left it.

You can find everything a sweep turned up from the Maintenance list: filter by type From a Checklist.

When it is finished

A sweep closes itself the moment nothing is left pending, and reopens if you clear a row afterwards. There is no button for it, which is deliberate: a sweep that could be marked finished with work still open on it is a sweep nobody goes back to.

Finished sweeps stay on the checklists page under Finished, and deleting the checklist they came from does not delete them. They keep their own name and their own wording, so what was checked in April survives whatever happens to the list in November.

With no signal

The field app keeps every open sweep and the rows of any you have opened, so you can work one out of signal. Answers are queued on the phone and send themselves the next time it has a connection — the row shows your answer straight away either way. Photos go up with the row, in one piece.

A sweep you have never opened on that phone has nothing to show. Open each one you plan to walk while you still have signal.

You can see everything queued under the sync icon in the field app header; a waiting answer is listed there as Checklist answer.