Part 1 — Understand BigWave · Chapter 2

A Tour of the UI

Every screen in BigWave is built from the same parts. Learn the layout once on the home page and you can navigate a screen you’ve never seen.

Logging in

Your BigWave lives at your company’s own address, something like yourcompany.bigwave.software. The login page asks for username and password, with a Remember Me option and a Forgot Password link that emails you a reset.

If two-step verification is on for your company, BigWave emails you a 4-digit code at login and asks for it before letting you in. By default you’re re-verified every 30 days per browser. Your admin controls the frequency.

Role note: what you see after login depends on your access level. This chapter shows the internal office view. Technicians land on a field-focused version of the same home page, and portal users see only their own slice. Chapter 4 maps who sees what.

The shared screen anatomy

Almost every screen has the same three zones:

  1. Header bar across the top: your company name, quick search, and the menu.
  2. Panel list down the left: the sections of the current screen, grouped under headings, many with live counts like Sites (12). Click a panel name and the main area switches to it. The panel list is the table of contents for whatever record you’re on.
  3. Main area: the selected panel’s content, usually a grid or a form. Panel headers often carry action buttons, like Add Document or Edit.

The menu in the header holds Home and, for users with the right permissions, an Actions menu containing Setup (company-wide administration, chapter 5) and Accounting (chapter 19). Most day-to-day navigation never touches the menu. It goes through the home page panels and quick search.

The home page

Log in as an internal user and the panel list shows four groups.

My Items is your personal slice: My Profile, My Assignments (jobs assigned to you), My Region Assignments (work orders in regions you cover), and My Projects (projects where you’re on the team).

Workflows lists every workflow type with counts of items assigned to you against active overall, plus an Attention Required entry when something is stuck and flagged. If your company doesn’t use workflows yet, this group stays quiet.

Global is the whole-company view: All Work Orders, Create Work Order, Deliverables, the Resource Calendar and Scheduled Events. Dispatchers live here.

Manage holds the master lists: Customers, Projects, Partners, Technicians, and, if your license includes asset management, Asset Types.

Role note: admins get extra buttons on some panels, like Edit Statuses… on All Work Orders, which controls which statuses the grid includes by default.

The search box in the header is the fastest way to move around. Pick a record type (work orders, customers, sites, and so on), type a fragment, a name, an address, a work order ID, and jump straight to the record. Learn this early. Experienced users navigate almost entirely by search and rarely click through lists.

My Profile

The My Profile panel under My Items is your own record: name, phone numbers, email, time zone, theme and password change. It’s also where you connect your Google Calendar, after which your BigWave assignments appear on your personal calendar without further work.

  • Panel counts are information. Documents (0) answers a question without a click.
  • Search first, browse second. Quick search plus a work order ID beats any amount of clicking.
  • The Learn More link, where a panel has one, opens help for that specific panel.
  • Everything is a link. In grids, customer names, site names and work order IDs all take you to the record. You’re rarely more than two clicks from anything.

Next: the grids those panels are made of, and how to bend them to your will.