Tips for Adding Repair Notes to your Dossier Report

---

All email entries to TSO are  done via plain, ordinary, every day email, using whatever email service you have on your phone - such as Outlook, GMail or any other provider.

Simply put, TSO reads  the eMails you send and does the data entry indicated.

Verbs (like "New Tail Number ..." or "Add  Squawk ...") go on the SUBJECT line.

Details like your labor activity, go inthe BODY.

That's it!

And since every email is Time Stamped, GOOD BYE TIME CLOCK.

Every smartphone has a Microphone icon, which listens to what you way, and converts that to typed text.         

If you use that feature instead of typing you are much more likely to add  more detailed descriptions, because it is so easy to do.

Every email adds one entry onto the specified Task 

You can add a description of any length in the BODY of every email, and you can 

send an unlimited number of emails to add to each Task.

But each email can only add  One action for One Task at a time.

You can also attach Pictures to your email, just as you normally would with any email on  your phone's email program.  Pictures taken 'horizontally' come out best on the Dossier Report, and you can send up to 4 pictures per eMail.

For the same reason that you and ATC 'repeat back what you just heard', so does TSO send back a 'Readback/Confirmation' email, telling you what it did.

For example, if you accidentally entered task 199 instead of 19, you would get a 

response like " * NO ACTION.... Task  not found"

Otherwise, it will confirm a successful implementation of  your request,,

show you your default values for Tail # and Task #,  and give you a plain text list of all your Tasks (so you don't need to run a full Dossier Report ).

When TSO reads your email, it expects the 'Verb' to be on the Subject LIne, such as Adding a new Tail number, adding a new Task, changing the Task # for a new Note,  or Running a Dossier Report. 

The specific wording  for these options is  included in your 'Readback/ Confirmation'  email in the "**Cheat Sheet** section.

If you are a "Contributor" and not the original Mechanic, you can only add Notes to existing Tasks.

For adding Notes to a Task, 

the SUBJECT line is the Task Number, 

and 'what you did' is the BODY of the eMail  as in

    SUBJECT : Task 5

    BODY:     I replaced......

(Below, we describe how you can add (or remove) green "Task Complete' checkmarks to the report for each individual Task)

is anything you want to say. 

Typically it describe the labor / actions you took,

This can be 'parts on order', or the PN,  or warranty information for future reference, or  software versions for avionics, or pressure readings for cylinders or struts.  Even add 'Post it Note' information that might come in handy years from now, when your memory of today won't be as clear. 

Every Dossier Report starts with "Task 1, // Admin// " which starts with this 'Task Completed' green checkmark.

You can add this checkmark for any Task just by adding the word "COMPLETE"  to any  SUBJECT  with that Task Line, Number, as in:

   SUBJ: Task 5 is Complete

The BODY can optionally include what you did to close out this task, or you can leave it blank and just use this email to add the Green Checkmark.

If you later decide that this Task still needs work, you can remove the Checkmark by sending a subsequent email with the word "OPEN" on the subject line like

  SUBJ  Task 5 is OPEN

  BODY It turns out that the repair didn't last, so we are ordering a new part..

If you are working on the same Task for a while, and adding multiple Notes to this same Task, you can simplify your emails by not stating the TASK # for each email.

You will notice that on every 'Readback/Confirmation' email that TSO sends after every email you send, it includes "Your default Tail#  and Task #" values.

If you do not specify any  changes to either of those, TSO will assume that you are still working on  that same Tail / Task when it receives an email, and will process it accordingly.  So you do not need to specify the Task # on the SUBJ line of every email, just leave it blank, if you are  still working on that same task.

If every email you send automatically includes a 'signature' (like "Sincerely..."), that text would normally look like part of your intended description in the BODY and be included on every entry on the Dossier Report, which is very undesirable.

To prevent that, just send an Email with the SUBJECT of HELP , with no added text in the BODY.   TSO will scan the BODY and detect this Signature line and record it as your 'Terminating Word", and ignore everything past that for all future emails.

If you are a Mechanic adding TSO to your shop, consider getting a separate, free GMail address account, to keep your 'TSO emails' separate from all of your other emails.

But beware of Hotmail, as we have had some problems with HotMail.

Even before those emails reach the TSO computer, they are sometimes blocked by the 'Gods of the Internet' as spam, especially if the SUBJECT line is blank.

We have not experienced any  such problems with '@GMail.com' accounts.