WorkStraight task management tool review

By freyas, last updated November 27, 2016

This is my honest review of WorkStraight task management software for individuals and teams. I will be reviewing the tool by using a free trial for a small business.

There are very many Work Order management systems out there. The competition is huge, so it helps to be the best at what you offer your users. Not all systems have the features your business needs so it helps to be able to try each of the promising ones and see which of them fits.

Here is a summarized list of my findings after trying both the free and the full version of WorkStraight management system for several days:

Pros:

Access from the web
Nice looking interface
Fast and responsive
No credit card required for a free 30-day trial
Customers may submit and track work orders
See work orders for each customer

Cons:

Non-customizable dashboard

WorkStraight review

The first thing that I liked about this tool is how easy it is to start using the software. I found a Chrome app that was installed in seconds and gave me a nice looking dashboard with help messages on what to do.

I quickly created my first Work Order to gather all pros and cons of the tool in order to be able to compare it to other task management software tools later. The process of creating tasks was intuitive as the “create a work order” link is placed both at the top and at the bottom of the side menu.

I signed up for a small business account with a 30 day free trial. The process was only two clicks away, and I didn’t need to use any credit card. Super easy!

Now was the time to create some tasks and see how the system will operate with a phone app, calendar and notifications.

I started by creating a Work Order which can be either open or closed. Tasks are created within work orders. If you click on Work Orders then “Assigned To Me” you will see the work orders assigned. Tasks on work orders are optional, but the actual Work Order is required.

In order to change the tasks status one need to provide the Task Message. Within the task message, the task status may be changed to “Not started”, “In progress”, “Completed”, “On hold” or “Refused”. You can also report hours worked.

Work Orders may be assigned to anyone, while tasks may be assigned only to people who are part of that particular Work Order. This is to avoid situations where people get assigned tasks without knowing it. So you can have many tasks assigned to you in different Work Orders.

I have created several Work Orders for several people with accompanying tasks and completed several of them. The calendar showed work orders for some people but not for others. In the process I’ve checked my mail and saw a huge pile of notifications. I didn’t want all of them so I went on and changed them. I could choose whether I would like emails, inn-app notifications or both. In the “Edit my info” settings I could choose which notifications I would like to receive:

One of the great features is a possibility to assign work orders to a particular customer. It did provide information about what Work Orders were created for this particular customer. Although I couldn’t see the difference between open and closed tasks for each customer.

After logging in as a customer I could see the work orders related to my problem. I could also track the progress of the tasks. Customer dashboard gives your customers opportunity to track work progress in real time.

Customers may also create their own Work Orders. Although I was a bit stunned that they can assign these as well. Customers generally don’t have a clue about who is doing what in the organization. I did feel eased when I saw that these Work Orders need to be approved.

In conclusion I did notice that the team behind WorkStraight have a good customer support themselves. They provide help in both the Chrome app-store, Twitter and on their website.

Overall I would give it 4,2 stars out of 5. This tool is looking good and have useful features. It will work great for businesses that need online customer support.