Glossary

These are the terms solarOS uses for the records you work with every day. Where a common word means something specific in the product, such as "Site" versus "Property", this page calls that out.

Customer, Property, System

Customer: A homeowner or business you do work for. Contact and Company are related record types: a Contact just needs a name and email, and a Company is a business account, such as an HOA or a financing company.

Property: A service address tied to a Customer, the site where the work happens.

Site: What a monitored Property is called inside the Monitoring app's Sites list and Site drawer. It's the same record as a Property, just renamed for monitoring.

System: The physical solar or battery equipment installed at a Site. One or more monitoring devices report on a System, and a Site can hold more than one System.

Fleet: All the Sites your organization actively monitors, viewed together on the Monitoring app's Fleet page.

Sales: Lead, Opportunity, Quote, Originator, Agreement, Project

Lead: A prospect who hasn't become a customer or a sales Opportunity yet.

Opportunity: A sales pursuit tied to a Customer, usually a Property, and tracked through pipeline stages until it's won or lost. An Opportunity comes from a converted Lead or is created directly.

Quote: A priced proposal you send a customer, tied to a Customer, Property, and usually an Opportunity.

Originator: The team member credited with bringing a sale in, such as the person who took the first call or set the appointment. Every Lead, Opportunity, and Quote has one. It starts as the person who creates the record, and you can pick someone else when you create a Lead or an Opportunity. A converted Lead's Originator carries over to its Opportunity, and a Quote starts with its Opportunity's Originator. It is separate from the Owner, who works the record, so changing one doesn't change the other. See Change an Originator.

Agreement: The document a customer signs to move forward with a Quote. Set up the agreements your organization uses under Settings → Sales → Agreement templates.

Project: The container for the execution work once a deal moves forward: Work Orders, permits, plansets, and other work items, tied to a Customer and usually a Property.

Field service

Work Order: A unit of field or service work inside a Project.

Expected time: How many days a permit, application, plan set, or waiting step can stay in one status before it needs you. Your company sets the usual times under Settings → Operations → Expected times. See Set expected times for waiting work and Read and reset the clock on waiting work.

Appointment: A scheduled visit for a Work Order: the time, the team members assigned, and the customer-facing arrival window.

Case: A tracked customer service issue, such as a hardware defect, workmanship problem, or billing question. Each Case has an Owner and moves through statuses from Open to Closed. A customer can track their Case's status from their portal. If two Cases cover the same issue, you can merge them: the duplicate closes as Merged and its work moves to the Case you keep.

Team

Department: A named group of teammates, such as Client Services or Service. Set them up under Settings → Team → Departments. Lists and the Operations dashboard can be filtered by the people in a department. See Group your team into departments.

Monitoring

Alert: A record the Monitoring app creates when a Site needs attention. Alerts move from New to Active to Resolved (or get Dismissed) as your team works them.

Maintenance plan: The recurring service plan you sell customers, which can include monitoring. Manage your plans from Settings → Operations → Maintenance plans.

Custom fields

Custom Field: A question your organization defines to collect the same information consistently. Add and manage them in Settings → Sales → Field library, which lists solarOS fields and your own in one A to Z list. For each field you choose where it shows (Work Orders, Permits, Plansets, or Applications) and whether it's a Property field, which means the property keeps the answer.

Calculated Field: A field whose answer is worked out by a formula from other answers and product details, so nobody types it. Add one in Settings → Sales → Field library by choosing Calculated under How it's filled.

Project snapshot: A card on a work order or planset that shows the project's answered fields, so the person doing the work doesn't have to open the project. Which fields it shows comes from the Field library.