Fault-report agent for property managers
Every fault report is matched to its property before anyone reads it. How it works at a property management firm with 9,000 units.
The target values we set for this process during the assessment and track in the monthly report:
Where it gets stuck, what we build and what usually gets in the way
Tools and platforms: Microsoft Foundry, Azure Container Apps, Microsoft Fabric, iX-Haus, Planon, Entra ID, Microsoft Purview.
Where it gets stuck
A single maintenance inbox covers 9,000 residential and commercial units, and by morning it holds 120 reports. A radiator is leaking on the third floor; a lift has stopped on the ground floor. Then there are screenshots from the tenant portal and phone calls that reception passes on as notes. Four property managers read every one of them. For each, they look up the unit, the lease and the contractor on the framework agreement for that trade, then place the order by email. Anyone who reports a fault at the weekend hears nothing back until Tuesday.
How we build it
The agent reads every report, whatever form it arrives in. It matches it to the property and unit, and checks the warranty and maintenance contract. It sets the urgency using the firm's own rules, then opens a ticket in the CAFM system. It also drafts a ready-to-send order to the responsible contractor and an acknowledgement to the tenant. In three cases a person has to approve the order first: imminent danger, costs above the property manager's limit, and unclear responsibility. Property, contract and contractor data come from a Fabric Lakehouse, to which we connect the property management software and the CAFM system.
What usually gets in the way
Hardly any property management firm has its urgency levels written down. They live in the heads of its experienced property managers. We draw them out together, usually as 12 to 15 rules on a single page, and that page becomes the most important document in the project.
What happens if the agent mistakes a report of a gas smell for a dripping tap?"
Imminent danger is the first rule we write, and it overrides every other. Any report of gas, water coming through the ceiling, someone trapped in a lift or a smell of burning goes straight to a person and to the emergency service, before the agent classifies anything. Before go-live, we test the agent against the last twelve months of reports to check that it applies the urgency levels correctly.
Shall we talk about your first process?
In a Short Assessment we sit down with your business team and IT and look at one process together. You leave with a clear target design and an effort estimate we stand behind. Free of charge.
