Key concepts

These terms appear throughout Maintella. Understanding how they relate makes the rest of the documentation easier to follow.

Organization

An organization is your tenant in Maintella. Users, assets, workflows, integrations, and reports all belong to one organization. Admin users sign in with email and password; field engineers typically do not have admin accounts.

Asset

An asset is a piece of equipment you service — a charger, vehicle, HVAC unit, boat, or any other tracked device. Assets hold identity fields (name, make, model, serial, location), optional files, task history, and — when linked to an integration — live diagnostics.

Assets can be created manually in the admin app or imported via integrations that sync from external systems.

Workflow

A workflow is a published set of step-by-step instructions, usually backed by forms that collect structured data at each step. Workflows live in a catalog per organization. They are not work items themselves — they are templates that tasks run against.

Workflows differ by how a task is created and who may run it. See Workflow types for the four shapes (assigned maintenance, self-startable, user workflow, and combined).

Task

A task is a single run of a workflow on a specific asset. It records who started and completed the work, timestamps, instructions, ticket references, and the work report (form answers). Tasks with field engineer identity appear in the asset Maintenance log. Anonymous user-workflow submissions appear in the Feedback log.

Tasks are created when an admin assigns work, when a field engineer self-starts a published workflow, or when a visitor completes a public user workflow.

Access key

An access key is the credential that opens the field-engineer asset page. It is embedded in URLs like /assets/access_key/{key}/. Each key is tied to an asset and optionally to a specific task.

Access keys can be time-bound (issued with a task assignment or admin-delivered link) or long-lived (created when a permanent QR code is claimed to an asset). See Sharing access for how keys are issued and how they differ from QR stickers.

Field engineer profile

Field engineers are not admin users. When someone with an access key first does work that requires identity, they provide name and contact details. Maintella stores this as a field engineer profile and associates it with completed tasks. Profiles enable accountability on maintenance work and unlock features like shared files and AI Chat.

Anonymous visitors on user workflows do not need a profile.

Forms and work reports

Forms define the fields collected during a workflow (text, numbers, photos, signatures, and more). Work reports are the submitted answers stored on the task when a workflow completes.

Integrations and diagnostics

An integration connects Maintella to an external system. The primary purpose is asset sync — importing devices automatically. On supported integrations, Maintella also fetches diagnostics (online status, components, fault conditions) shown on the field-engineer’s advanced asset view.

See Integrations overview.

How the pieces connect

Organization
  └── Assets (+ optional integration sync)
        └── Workflows (catalog)
              └── Tasks (work instances + work reports)
        └── Access keys → field URLs
        └── Files (+ optional AI indexing)
        └── Short URLs / QR codes → claim → access keys

Admin staff manage the left side. Field engineers and visitors enter through access keys on the right.