Field operations where every fault has an owner — from dispatch and work permits to contractor crews and proof of service

Mi Retail is an operations center for utilities and any organization whose work happens in the field: power, water, gas, telecom networks, and teams that install, inspect or repair assets on site. It does not model the network or schedule maintenance plans; it manages the human work around those records. A reported fault, a crew dispatch, a work permit, a job handed to a contractor or a repair that needs verification becomes an Operational Work Item with an owner, a state, a due time and evidence captured on site. The domain work — assets, meters, outages, routes, dispatch — runs in StoneOS apps or in the systems you already use.

No. Your asset management system stays the record for assets and maintenance, your outage system keeps the network and customer impact, and your field service tool keeps its work orders. Mi Retail never duplicates them. What it adds is the layer those systems do not cover well: the coordination between people and companies when a record needs action. The outage system tells you a feeder is down; Mi Retail manages who assesses it, who approves the permit, which part goes to a contractor, what the job is waiting for and with which evidence it closes. Keep your systems; Mi Retail takes over where the work leaves them.

When a fault is reported, the control room opens an incident work item that holds the whole case. A crew is dispatched and closes its assessment with photos and its location. Before work starts, the operations supervisor approves the work permit with isolation and grounding confirmed. If part of the job belongs to a contractor, such as setting a new pole or excavating, it goes to that company as a derived work item. The crew completes the repair with photo and geolocation evidence, the permit is closed only when every crew is clear, and the control room confirms the restoration and closes the outage with its full trail.

Yes. Work between organizations moves as derived work items, so both the utility and its contractor need their own organization on Mi Retail. The utility picks the contractor from the directory and sends the job with the site, the approved permit and the deadline; the contractor receives it in its own intake queue and assigns it to one of its crews. Each side keeps its privacy: the utility follows the state, due time and proof of service, but not the contractor’s internal scheduling or conversations, and the contractor can serve several utilities without mixing their information. When the contractor closes its part with photos and location, the utility sees it immediately.

The work permit is an approval work item linked to the job, not a paper form in the truck. The crew requests it from the site with the isolation points and the grounding it has applied; the supervisor approves or rejects it with a reason, and the crew sees on the job itself whether that approval is recorded before anyone starts. Contractor crews working under the same permit see it on their derived work item. At the end, the permit closes only after every crew confirms it is clear. Your permit rules and safety procedures stay yours; Mi Retail makes sure each step has an owner, a time and a record.

Each field work item closes with the evidence the organization defines for that kind of job: photos before and after, the geolocation where the work was done, readings, signatures or a short form. Because the evidence is attached by the person on site while the work happens, it carries its own time and place instead of being rebuilt later from calls and messages. Evidence from contractor crews arrives the same way on their derived work items. When a customer disputes a visit, an insurer asks about a claim or an internal review looks at an incident, the proof is already attached to the case.

Field work often happens where coverage is weak, which is why the Field Operations edition of StoneOS includes Offline Execution and Evidence Capture apps built for crews on site. Those apps handle the domain side: forms, photos and readings captured on the device and synchronized when it is back in range. Mi Retail receives the result as the state and evidence of the corresponding work item, so the control room sees when the job was actually done and by whom. If you already use a mobile field service tool with its own offline mode, it stays in place, and the work items it produces reach Mi Retail the same way.

Crews see My Work and Today with only the jobs dispatched to them, the permit status and the evidence each one requires. Dispatchers and supervisors use Team Operations to see which jobs are unassigned, waiting for a permit, blocked by a missing part or running late, and to reassign work between crews. An operations manager uses Operational Portfolio to follow each territory and each contractor, and Executive Operations shows only the decisions that need that level — a prolonged outage, a contractor that keeps missing its times, a repeated failure on the same asset. Everyone works on the same operation from a different surface.

Every work item keeps who acted, when, under which approval and with which attachments, and derived work keeps its link to the case it came from. After a major event, the organization can show the full sequence for each outage: when it was reported, which crew was sent, who approved the permit and on what conditions, what the contractor did and when, the evidence of the repair and the moment service was confirmed. Control & Assurance lets an internal auditor or a safety team review those trails without asking anyone for screenshots or radio logs, because the record was built while the work happened.

Yes, it is the same product at both ends. In a small company with two or three crews, the experience collapses to the essentials: one Today view with the jobs of the day, what is waiting on a permit or a part and what must be closed before evening, without fake hierarchies or empty teams. In a large utility with a control room, dozens of crews, several territories and many contractors, the same work items are distributed across dispatch, crews, supervisors and management, each with its own surface, and exceptions escalate to the right level. Small contractors also use it to receive and close work from the utilities they serve.

The Energy & Utilities edition of StoneOS brings apps for the network and its assets — sites, infrastructure, meters, assets, maintenance, inspections, work permits, incidents and outages — and the Field Operations edition adds field crews, territories, routes, dispatch board, mobile work, offline execution, geolocation, field forms, evidence capture and proof of service. Both sit on top of the Business Core apps every team uses: Chat, Docs, Drive, Calendar, People, Notes, Sheets, Slides and To-do. Those apps keep the depth of each domain; Mi Retail is where the work they generate meets the people who must move it. If you keep your current systems, they stay the record.

Start with one process that keeps slipping — outage repairs, work permits or jobs handed to contractors — instead of modeling the whole operation. Create the workspace for that process, invite the dispatchers, supervisors and crew leads involved, and let the next faults arrive as work items with an owner and a due time. Within a few weeks you will see where jobs wait and which handoffs cause delays. Then invite your main contractors to receive work through Mi Retail, connect the systems you already use and, when it makes sense, bring in the Energy & Utilities or Field Operations apps from StoneOS. Mi Retail is free to start, so a single territory can try it first.