1. Answer first
The handyman hunch holds. 81% of Situs and 67% of Western Slope work orders go first to their own people.1
AppFolio already tells the tech and the vendor, in the same minute as the assignment. Nobody types that text.
The calendar is not the dispatch tool, and the Priority label is unused. The Emergency flag drives speed: done in 0.86 days vs 7.74 for Normal at Situs.
Preferred vendors are real at Situs (one vendor gets 83% of pest jobs, one gets 76% of appliance jobs) and weaker at Western Slope (21% to 64%).
1 Share of the first assignment. Situs 80.7% (66.2% to a tech, 14.2% held by the coordinator). Western Slope 63.0%, or 67.2% counting 223 orders a tech closed with no assignment step.
2. How the office works today
A person routes, AppFolio notifies, the tech does the work. Numbers are Situs / Western Slope.
| Situs | Western Slope | Same? | |
|---|---|---|---|
| First sent in-house | 80.7% | 63.0% (67.2%) | Same: mostly own people |
| Who creates orders | office 2,073, bot 1,205, call center 1,204, tech 676 | tech 606, office 276, bot 174, call center 154 | Different |
| Priority "Urgent" | 2.4% | 1.2% | Same: unused |
| Days to done, Emergency flag vs Normal | 0.86 vs 7.74 (n 141 / 3,719) | 1.94 vs 4.66 (n 53 / 951) | Same direction |
| Gets a scheduled time | 6.5% | 34.8% | Different |
| Top vendor's share per category | 24% to 83% | 21% to 64% | Situs tighter |
| Make-ready sent to vendors | 38% (366 of 962) | 60% (174 of 290) | Different |
| On-call | weekly rotation: one person took 90%+ of pages in 78.4% of 88 weeks | not enabled | Different |
| Roster churn | one tech faded mid-2025, one joined Sep 2025 | the maintenance manager (468 first assignments) left end of July 2026 | Same: rules go stale |
3. The rules, with hit rates
Trained on the oldest 70% of assigned orders, scored on the newest 30% (Situs 1,724, Western Slope 487).
In-house or vendor? share right
| Rule | Situs | Western Slope |
|---|---|---|
| Always in-house | 78.9% | 69.6% |
| By category | 78.9% | 73.1% |
| Confident rules only | 84.6%, on 57.2% of orders | 89.1%, on 26.3% |
Confident = 80%+ right on training, 5+ cases. Example: plumbing, HVAC, doors and electrical at Situs stay in-house 90.7% to 95.6%; make-ready at Western Slope goes out 61.9%.
Which person? share right
| Rule | Situs | Western Slope |
|---|---|---|
| Busiest person | 15.5% | 16.8% |
| By category | 20.5% | 19.5% |
| Category + property | 28.0% | 22.2% |
| Confident person rules | 61.7%, on 8.6% | 57.1%, on 8.6% |
| Right answer in top 2 | 41.0% | 54.6% |
| In-house: same tech as the last order at this property, prior 14 days | 57.3%, on 95.1% of in-house | 70.8%, on 72.5% |
The office routes by territory, rotation and roster, not by trade. After hours at Situs it is the week's on-call tech.
Preferred vendor per category top vendor's share of vendor orders, of n
| Category | Situs | Western Slope |
|---|---|---|
| Pest | Denver Pest Protector 83% of 216 | Mountain Pest Control 47% of 36 |
| Appliance | Universal Service 76% of 176 | Double D Services 64% of 64 |
| HVAC | Creative Exteriors 29% of 28 | Activ Construction 58% of 76 |
| Windows | Creative Exteriors 80% of 20 | Glass Guru 44% of 16 |
| Electrical | Creative Exteriors 47% of 30 | Bob Davis 55% of 20 |
| Common area | Creative Exteriors 45% of 38 | Bob Davis 64% of 39 |
| Plumbing | Universal Service 24% of 54 | Distinctive Design Build 21% of 52 |
| Make-ready | A and J Renovation 34% of 304 | GJ Carpet Cleaning 29% of 183 |
Universal Service is staff-run (a Situs email address). Creative Exteriors and Bob Davis are each office's general handyman contractor, not specialists.
How long it takes. Situs logs labor on 3,283 orders: median 0.98 h, 90.5% within 4 h. Pest 0.25 h, appliance 0.75 h, plumbing 1.0 h, make-ready 2.5 h. Western Slope logs labor on 3 orders, so durations come from Situs; its most used window is 4 h (185 of 536).
4. What we already have
Most pieces exist. Nothing learns from history, and nothing reads tech availability.
| Piece | State | Reuse? |
|---|---|---|
| Pick order: own handyman, then preferred vendor, then specialist | live | Yes, as the fallback |
| Preferred vendor roster per trade, building over company | live filled by hand | Yes: the store for learned rules |
| Text page to the handyman | live | Only where AppFolio does not already text |
| Vendor quote and dispatch emails | test inbox only no real vendor emailed | Not in MVP |
| Vendor offers times, tenant picks | live | Yes |
| Booked visits on the building's Outlook calendar | live | Yes |
| Vendor phones or emails a time, it lands on the calendar | live | Yes |
| Robot: assign vendor, schedule, change priority, mark done | live | Yes: all AppFolio writes |
| Tech working days, hours, quiet hours | stored, never read | Yes: read it |
| "Propose schedule" tool | dead invents slots | Replace |
| February quote parsing and comparison | deleted May 4 | Later, for bids |
AppFolio already does the vendor email, the vendor portal (accept, estimate, schedule, done, invoice), the office and resident notice when a job is scheduled plus a 24 h reminder, and an in-house drag-and-drop calendar these two offices barely use.
5. The MVP
Learn the office's own routing once, assign only when confident, let Clara own the tenant's time and the follow-up.
- Learn routing at onboarding. From the customer's own history: in-house or vendor by category, preferred vendor per category, last tech per property, the on-call rotation. Saved into the preferred roster we already have; the PM confirms once.
- Assign only when confident. Otherwise the office gets a ready package: the job, the suggested person, the runner-up, the tenant's windows. Expect the confident in-house or vendor call on about 57% of Situs and 26% of Western Slope orders at first.
- Schedule. Read tech hours (stored, unread) and the Outlook calendar, offer the tenant 2 windows, confirm, write the assignee and time to AppFolio.
- Notify. AppFolio keeps the vendor email and tech text. Clara adds the tenant side and the follow-up after the job.
- Emergency. Emergency flag goes to the week's on-call tech, no entry question.
Multiple bids are a later layer. Neither office asks for estimates (0% at Situs, 1.4% at Western Slope) and no order mentions a not-to-exceed amount. The deleted February quote work is the starting point when a customer asks.
Data we do not hold. Western Slope has no tech timers and labor on 3 orders; Situs sets a time on only 6.5% of orders. We hold email subjects, not bodies. Office-to-tech texts happen off AppFolio. A pull would need the coordinators' phone threads, the Situs coordinator mailbox, and AppFolio's per-order sent-email pages.
6. Proof ladder
From the testing playbook. Unit tests are build hygiene, never a rung.
- 1Read-only replay of all 8,374 work orders6,398 Situs + 1,976 Western Slope. Hit rate per customer; where rules say "office decides", output byte-identical to today.
- 2Willows live runA real tenant text, end to end: windows offered, one picked, AppFolio order with assignee and time, AppFolio's notice, the follow-up. Record ids as evidence.
- 3Sandbox companyOne coordinator-led shape (Situs), one manager-in-the-field shape (Western Slope).
- 4Supervised week at one customerTurn-on is Fede's call.
7. Open choices
Pick a letter for each.
| Choice | Options | Recommend |
|---|---|---|
| When Clara is unsure |
| A: even the top 2 guesses are right only 41% / 55% |
| Who confirms learned vendors |
| A: they know who left |
| Who picks the time first |
| A: Western Slope already works this way (363 of 628) |
| Make-ready in the MVP |
| A: split per trade, top vendor only 29% to 34% |
| Who contacts vendors |
| A: it already reaches 96% / 98% in the same minute |