Assign service advisors and technicians
An Estimate or Repair Order names one service advisor and one default technician, and each Service carries its own technician assignment on top of that. The document fields say who owns the visit; the per-Service lists say who is doing which piece of the work. This page covers where each assignment is made, how they interact, and what they change elsewhere in BayEngine.
Two levels of assignment
The repair order itself has two fields, shown in the Visit Details card on the Overview tab: Service advisor and Technician. One person each, both optional.
The Technician field is the repair order's default technician. Actual dispatch happens per Service: every Service has its own technician list, and that list can hold several people. When the repair order has a technician, every Service added to it starts assigned to that person, so for a one-tech job you set the field once and never think about it again. When the work is split, you override individual Services, and one repair order ends up with as many technicians as its Services need.
Changing the repair order's technician later follows through to the Services still riding the default: Services with no technician and Services assigned only to the previous technician pick up the new person. Services you pointed at someone else, or at a team, are overrides and keep their lists until you edit them on the Work tab. Clearing the field unassigns the Services that were following it. The change also moves which board lane the card sits in.
On an Estimate, the Technician is the visit default that will become the Repair Order default at conversion. Existing per-Service assignments remain separate; unassigned Services pick up the default when the Repair Order is created.
Assignment is routing, not access. Assigning someone grants them no permission they didn't already have, and a technician does not need to be assigned to a Service to log work time on it.
Set the advisor and technician on the visit
- Open the Estimate or Repair Order and stay on the Overview tab.
- In the Visit Details card, pick a person in the Service advisor or Technician dropdown. Pick Unassigned to clear a field.
Each change saves immediately.
Each dropdown lists the people at your shop who hold the matching Shop Role: the advisor picker shows Service advisors, the technician picker shows Technicians. Someone who is currently assigned but no longer holds the role still appears, so an old assignment never vanishes from view.
Where the fields start depends on how the Repair Order was created (see Create or convert a repair order). A Repair Order created from an Appointment carries all four shared visit facts. An Appointment's advisor defaults to its creator when that person holds the active Service advisor role at the Shop but can be changed on the appointment form. A Repair Order converted from an Estimate carries the Estimate's shared visit facts. One created from scratch defaults the advisor to its creator when that person holds the active Service advisor role at the Shop; otherwise the advisor and technician start empty.
Per-Service technician lists have their own origin. Technicians you assigned to Services on the Estimate arrive on the converted repair order's Services already assigned, so planned dispatch survives conversion. Services that arrive unassigned pick up the Repair Order's default technician.
Assign from the board
In a user-specific Workflow Stage, the Workflow board draws a lane per technician plus an Unassigned lane, grouped by each repair order's technician (Workflow stages and operational defaults covers the setting). Dragging a card into a technician's lane reassigns the repair order to that technician; dragging it into the Unassigned lane clears the field. Moving a card within or into a stage that is not user-specific leaves the technician unchanged. Either way the technician change is recorded with the stage moves in the repair order's history. If the assigned person is inactive or no longer holds the Technician role, the card appears in Unassigned rather than creating a lane for someone who cannot receive technician work.
For dispatchers this is the fastest way to hand out work: drag the card to the person, done. Balancing those lanes is its own topic; see Manage workload, waiting-for-parts, and holdover work.
Assign technicians to a Service
On the Work tab, every Service card has a technician select. It takes more than one person: pick as many as the job needs, and the card shows up to three avatars with a count for the rest. The picker lists users with the Technician role, plus anyone already assigned.
The Estimate tab has the same select on each Service row, but there it holds a single name. Picking a person on the Estimate tab replaces the Service's whole technician list with just that person, so when a Service has a team on it, make changes from the Work tab.
Inspections are assigned separately: each Inspection on the Inspections tab has its own single technician select, filled the same way.
Once assigned, technicians run the Service from the Work tab. Starting the work timer and checking off labor and part lines are covered in Track Service progress and work time.
What assignments drive
The repair order's technician decides which lane the card occupies in user-specific stages, and it is what the Workflow board's employee filter matches. That filter has Only me, All employees, and Select none shortcuts; repair orders with no technician group under Unassigned. The Documents page filters the same way, except a repair order there matches on either its advisor or its technician, and Estimates match on their advisor. The Calendar's employee filter matches either appointment assignment.
Automations can point a Task at the person on the record: the repair order's service advisor, its default technician, or an Inspection's technician. So "text the customer" lands with the advisor and "pull the vehicle in" with the tech, without naming anyone when the rule is written.
On the Customer Portal, the Show staff first names setting names assigned technicians in customer-facing copy; with it off, the portal says "your technician" instead. The setting lives with the Customer Portal settings.
Work time is the one thing assignment does not control. Time is recorded per person per Service whether or not that person was assigned, so a tech who jumps in to help still gets their minutes attributed correctly. Productivity and efficiency reporting built on those records is planned under Staff, Time, and Shop Performance.
Assignment or a pooled Task
Assignment names a specific person on the work. A Task can instead be pointed at a Role Pool, such as the shop's Technician pool, where any user holding that Shop Role sees it and claims it; claiming moves the Task from the pool to that person. Use assignment when you know who owns the job, and a pooled Task when the next free person should grab it. How pools and claiming work is on the Shop Roles page, and where Tasks fit each role's day is in Learning paths by staff role.
Who can assign
Setting these fields on an Estimate needs Estimates Update. Setting them on a Repair Order, including by lane drop, needs Repair orders Update. The Service advisor role defaults include both permissions; the Technician role default includes Repair orders Update but not Estimates Update. The per-Service technician lists are their own permission resource, one of the grants that exist outside the permission grid, and there the defaults differ: Service advisors can change them, Technicians can only see them. So out of the box a tech can claim a whole repair order but not re-crew a Service; grant a lead tech the technician assignments resource if they dispatch work themselves.
Only people with access to your shop can be assigned. An Estimate or Repair Order default technician and the Workflow board lanes additionally require an active Technician role. The pickers never offer anyone else, and the API enforces the same boundaries without treating superuser access as shop membership.