Getting Started with TeamWork: Administrator Setup Guide

This guide walks a new administrator through first-time setup of a TeamWork organization. Follow the steps in order — each one builds on the last. By the end you will have a working maintenance operation: a location hierarchy, a registered asset, a live team, an open work order, and a preventive maintenance schedule on the calendar.

Expect to spend 30–60 minutes on the full setup. You can stop after any step and resume later — nothing expires.

Before You Start

TeamWork is structured around four core objects:

Everything in TeamWork connects back to these four. Set them up in this order and the rest of the application will make sense immediately.

Step 1: Complete Your Organization Profile

Settings → Organization

Before adding any data, fill in the basics. TeamWork uses these settings across email notifications, reports, and the public request portal.

• Organization name — the name that appears on outbound emails, PDF reports, and the requester portal. Use the name your technicians and requesters will recognize.
• Timezone — critical for work order scheduling and preventive maintenance triggers. If your operation spans multiple time zones, set this to the timezone where most maintenance activity originates. Individual users can override their own timezone in profile settings.
• Date and time format — choose MM/DD/YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY based on your region.
• Brand color — optional, but this tints the interface and outbound emails to match your organization. Your logo’s primary hex color works well here.

What to do: Go to Settings → Organization. Fill in name, timezone, and date format. Save. These three fields affect report headers and notification timestamps, so get them right before data entry starts.

Step 2: Build Your Location Hierarchy

Locations (left sidebar)

A location hierarchy is the backbone of your asset registry and work order routing. TeamWork supports up to six levels deep — from a top-level campus or portfolio down to individual rooms or zones.

Plan your hierarchy before you build it

The right structure depends on your operation. Common patterns:

Facilities management:

Campus → Building → Floor → Room

Property management:

Portfolio → Property → Building → Unit

Manufacturing:

Plant → Production Area → Line → Machine Bay

Fleet:

Region → Depot → Bay

Keep the hierarchy flat where it doesn’t add value. A single building with six rooms probably doesn’t need a “Campus” level sitting above it. The goal is to be able to answer “where is this asset?” in two or three clicks — not to mirror every organizational nuance.

Add your top-level location first

1. Click Locations in the left sidebar, then Add location.
2. Enter the name (e.g., “Main Campus” or “123 Oak Street Property”).
3. Leave the Parent field blank — this makes it a top-level location.
4. Add address details if you want them on work orders and reports.
5. Save.

Add child locations

Repeat for each sub-location, setting the Parent dropdown to the appropriate parent each time. TeamWork will render these as a nested tree. You can add, rename, and rearrange locations later — the hierarchy is not locked after setup.

Tip: Don’t try to enter every location at once. Add the top two or three levels now, then let the hierarchy grow naturally as technicians and managers add the detail they actually need.

Step 3: Register Your First Assets

Assets (left sidebar)

An asset is any piece of equipment, system, or infrastructure that your team maintains. Typical examples: HVAC units, elevators, fire suppression systems, generators, production lines, fleet vehicles, kitchen equipment.

What makes a good asset record

• Asset name — specific enough to distinguish it from similar units. “Chiller” is ambiguous. “Chiller Unit 2 — Mechanical Room B” is not.
• Asset ID / tag number — if you use equipment tags or barcodes, enter the tag number here. TeamWork can generate a QR code for each asset that technicians scan from their phone.
• Location — link the asset to the location you just created. This is what makes work order history searchable by location.
• Make, model, serial number — useful for warranty lookups, parts ordering, and maintenance history comparisons across similar equipment.
• Commissioned date — used to calculate asset age in reports.

Add an asset

1. Click Assets, then Add asset.
2. Enter the name and select its location.
3. Fill in make/model/serial if you have them handy. You can add these later.
4. Save.

Repeat for your most critical assets first — the ones you currently maintain manually or where a failure would cause the most disruption. You don’t need a complete inventory on day one. In practice, asset records grow organically as work orders get created against them.

Asset classes and custom fields

If your assets share structured data beyond the standard fields — e.g., rated capacity, last calibration date, fluid type — you can define an Asset Class under Settings → Asset Classes. Each class gets its own set of custom fields that appear on every asset of that type. Set this up if it matters to your operation; skip it if the standard fields are sufficient.

Step 4: Invite Your Team

People (left sidebar)

TeamWork uses five roles. Assign the lowest role that gives each person what they need:

Invite a team member

1. Click People, then Invite person.
2. Enter their name and email address.
3. Select their role.
4. (Optional) Assign them to a Department — useful for organizing technicians by trade or area.
5. Send the invite. They receive an email with a set-password link that is valid for 48 hours.

A note on requesters

Requesters don’t need a seat in the full interface. TeamWork also offers a public request portal (Settings → Request Portal) where anyone — with or without a TeamWork account — can submit a maintenance request via a shareable URL. This is useful for tenants, production staff, or facility users who should be able to report issues without seeing your full maintenance queue. See Step 6 for setup.

Step 5: Create Your First Work Order

Work Orders (left sidebar)

With at least one location, one asset, and one technician in the system, you’re ready to create a work order.

Create a work order

1. Click Work Orders, then New work order.
2. Title — write it for the technician who will read it, not the person who created it. “Leaking seal on Hydraulic Press 3 — left cylinder side” beats “hydraulic issue.”
3. Type — select Corrective, Preventive, Inspection, or Project. This affects reporting.
4. Priority — set a priority that reflects actual urgency. If you find yourself marking everything High, your priority definitions need work. (See our Work Order Best Practices article for priority definition guidance.)
5. Asset — link the work order to the asset you registered in Step 3. Every WO should link to an asset if one exists; location-only WOs lose maintenance history.
6. Assigned to — assign to the technician you invited in Step 4.
7. Due date — required if this work is time-sensitive. Due dates are the mechanism that turns a task list into a schedule.
8. Save. The technician receives an email notification and the work order appears in their queue.

What happens next

The technician opens the work order, updates its status to In Progress, logs their time, records any parts used, adds completion notes, and closes it. Each of those actions creates an activity log entry. The closed work order becomes part of the asset’s maintenance history.

Step 6: Set Up the Request Portal

Settings → Request Portal

The request portal is a public web form at a URL you share with requesters — tenants, production staff, facility users. Anyone with the link can submit a maintenance request without a TeamWork login.

1. Go to Settings → Request Portal.
2. Enable the portal.
3. Choose the default location or let requesters pick from a list.
4. Customize the portal name and instructions that appear at the top of the form.
5. Copy the shareable URL and distribute it to your requesters (email, signage, intranet, QR code on a wall).

Submitted requests arrive in your Work Orders queue as Requests — a separate status from active work orders. A manager reviews each request and either converts it to a work order (assigning it to a technician) or declines it with a note. The requester gets an automatic email when their request changes status.

Tip: You can have multiple portals targeting different locations or departments. Under Settings → Departments you can create department-specific portals with different branding and routing.

Step 7: Schedule Preventive Maintenance

Preventive Maintenance (left sidebar)

Preventive maintenance (PM) schedules trigger recurring work orders automatically — daily, weekly, monthly, or on meter intervals. This is the step that moves your operation from reactive (fix it when it breaks) to proactive (maintain it on a schedule).

Create a PM schedule

1. Click Preventive Maintenance, then New PM schedule.
2. Name — descriptive enough to identify the task. “Monthly HVAC filter inspection — Building A” is better than “HVAC.”
3. Asset — link to the asset this PM applies to.
4. Frequency — select the trigger: every N days/weeks/months, or a specific day of each month.
5. Assigned to — the technician or team who will perform this PM.
6. Work order template — enter the description and checklist items that should appear on every generated work order. A good PM template includes: what to inspect, what to check for, pass/fail criteria, and any safety precautions.
7. Lead time — how many days before the due date TeamWork should generate the work order. A 3-day lead time on a monthly PM means technicians see it in their queue a few days before it’s due.
8. Save. TeamWork immediately calculates the next due date and will auto-generate the work order when the time comes.

How many PM schedules to start with

Don’t try to schedule everything at once. Start with your top 10 most critical assets — the ones where a missed PM would cause safety risk, expensive repair, or production loss. Once those are running smoothly, work down to the next tier.

Step 8: Configure Notifications

Settings → Notifications

TeamWork sends email notifications for work order assignment, status changes, PM generation, and due date approaching. The defaults are reasonable, but check them before you finish setup.

Recommended configuration for a new org:

• Technicians should receive notifications when a WO is assigned to them and when a WO they’re watching has a comment added.
• Managers should receive a digest of overdue work orders (daily or weekly, not real-time) and notifications when a new request comes in from the portal.
• Requesters should receive status updates on their submitted requests.

Avoid turning on too many real-time notifications for managers — inbox noise is a real problem, and managers who are buried in notifications start filtering everything.

Dashboard: Your Setup Checklist

When you sign in as an owner or admin, your Dashboard shows a setup checklist that tracks your progress through the steps above. Once you’ve created a location, an asset, invited a teammate, and created a work order, the checklist will show those items as complete.

The checklist disappears from the dashboard once all items are checked off or after 30 days, whichever comes first.

What’s Next

Once your core setup is complete, the next areas to explore:

Reports — under Reports in the left sidebar, you’ll find pre-built dashboards for work order backlog, technician utilization, asset downtime, and PM compliance. These become useful after you’ve been running for 30–60 days and have enough data to analyze.

Parts inventory — if you maintain a storeroom, add your parts under the Parts module. Linking parts to work orders gives you accurate cost-per-repair figures and automatic stock-level tracking.

Integrations — TeamWork can post work order activity to Slack or Teams channels, sync the maintenance calendar to any iCal client, and connect to other tools via the REST API (Settings → Integrations & API).

Automations — under Settings → Automations, you can set up rules that trigger automatically when work orders meet certain conditions — for example, escalating an overdue high-priority WO to a manager, or creating a follow-up inspection when a specific asset type is repaired.

Common First-Week Questions

Can I import existing data? Yes. TeamWork supports bulk import for locations, assets, and work orders via CSV. The import templates are available under each module’s “Import” action. Import locations first, then assets (which reference location IDs), then historical work orders.

What if I set up the location hierarchy wrong? You can rename, move, and restructure locations at any time. Assets and work orders linked to a location follow the move automatically.

How do I remove someone from the team? Go to People, find the user, and select Deactivate. Deactivated users cannot log in and do not count against your seat limit, but their name and activity history are preserved on existing records.

Can technicians see each other’s work orders? By default, technicians see all open work orders. You can restrict this in Settings → Permissions so that technicians only see work orders assigned to them.

Who should be an Admin vs. a Manager? Use Admin sparingly — typically only the maintenance supervisor or facilities director who needs to manage other users and change org settings. Everyone else who dispatches work and manages assets should be a Manager.

Support and Help

If you run into anything not covered here, click Support in the left sidebar to submit a ticket. The TeamWork support team typically responds within one business day.

For general CMMS concepts and maintenance management guidance, explore the rest of the TeamWork Learning Center.