KeyLink for Field Reps

The field side of KeyOne — your route for the day, the work waiting at each store, counting the shelf, writing up orders and quotes, and what happens to it all afterwards. About 9 minutes.

KeyLink is the field side of KeyOne, built for phones and one-handed use while you’re standing in a store aisle. It puts the right work in front of you at the right store and captures what you did, so head office can see the result. KeyLink is part of the main KeyOne app and is role-gated to field reps — if you have a rep role, it’s there for you. You can install it to your phone’s home screen straight from your browser (it’s a PWA), so it opens like a native app, full-screen, with no address bar in the way.

Managers and admins can open KeyLink too, viewing as a rep: everything renders as that rep would see it, read only, and a banner says so. Nothing a viewer does is filed in the rep’s name.

Getting around

KeyLink is built around a bottom tab bar — large, thumb-friendly targets you can hit without looking:

• Route — your stores for the day, in driving order
• Store — your stores, and everything to do at the one you’re in
• Work — every open decision at your stores, grouped by store
• Stats — your visits and your work, today, this week and this month

Two more screens sit behind those: Visits (every visit you have booked or done, with a New visit button) and Forms (every form type and everything you have filed). Orders and quotes are not tabs of their own — they live inside a store, because an order is always written for a store.

Offline

If you lose signal, a banner appears:

“Offline — 3 changes saved on this phone, syncing when you reconnect”

Keep working exactly as normal — count shelves, file forms, write up orders — and KeyLink holds it all on the phone, then syncs automatically the moment you’re back online. While it drains you see a small syncing chip; nothing on any screen says “sent” when it means “queued”. On a shared phone, work captured under one rep is never filed as the next rep who signs in: it is held, and says so, until its owner is back.

Your route for the day

Open Route to see the stores you cover, sequenced for the least total driving from your depot. The screen leads with the day in one line — stops to go, kilometres of driving and the rand waiting across them — and then calls out your first stop with its distance, how many decisions are open there and what they’re worth. Switch between Today, This week and This month to see how many visits are booked in each.

An honest note on distances. Where a map service is configured, distances are measured road distances. Where it is not, the estimate is straight-line distance × 1.3, at 40 km/h — and the screen says exactly that. Either way the order is your planner’s optimised running order, not a schedule: no arrival times are shown because none were planned. Directions opens your phone’s own maps app.

A stop your manager booked for today is called out as such. Tap a store to open it.

At the store

The Store tab opens on Your stores — the outlets assigned to you, ordered by the value of work waiting at each, with a search box. Each row carries how many decisions are open there, the rand at risk, and a Planned chip if a visit is booked. Open one.

The store screen’s header carries the store’s name and code, the state of the visit there (none planned, planned, in progress, completed) and the headline number — open decisions and the rand behind them (“35 open · R707.6K at risk”). Store health shows the on-shelf availability from your last shelf count, or says plainly that there is no score yet because nobody has counted.

The one big button at the bottom moves the visit along: Plan a visit here → Start visit → Complete visit.

Beneath the header sit the sub-tabs:

Win List | Audit | Forms | Orders | Quotes | Guides | Notes | Summary

Win List

The open decisions at this store, biggest first. Each card names the product, the rule that raised it, its severity and its value — in the unit the rule measures: rand for a distribution gap, days for stale promo material, units for a stock shortfall. Only rand is ever called “at risk” and only rand is added into the store’s total.

There is deliberately no “mark resolved”. A decision closes when the data stops raising it — the shelf is full again, the order landed — not when somebody ticks it off. What you can do is dismiss it, with a reason (already fixed, product discontinued, store closed that bay), or snooze it to a date. Both are recorded as your judgement, and neither claims the problem is gone.

Audit

Count the shelf: facings you can see, per product. Leave a product blank if you did not look at it — blank is not zero, and KeyLink never turns one into the other. A count is filed against the visit you are in the store for, so it needs an open visit; past counts are listed below it. The count is what produces the store’s health score.

Forms

The form types your organisation has set up — a dormant-outlet check, an out-of-stock reason, a promotion execution check. Filling one in from inside a store visit records the submission against that outlet and visit, which is what makes it show up in the right place afterwards. A form can carry photos; head office sees them under Form results. If nobody has set any form types up yet, the tab says so rather than showing an empty shell.

Orders

Write up an order for this store: pick a product, enter the quantity in cases or units, add lines, submit. Quantities are yours — nothing is pre-filled unless a replenishment model in your deployment produced a suggestion, and the screen says which. The order is queued on the phone if you are offline and lands as an order document in the office’s Sales documents.

Quotes

Write up a quote — a price you have agreed with this store for a product, for a stated period. Prices are yours; no price list on the phone knows what you agreed. A quote is committed in your name, and the office converts it into an order (the quote is kept as it was, so what you quoted stays answerable).

Guides

Reference material head office has published for the shelf — planograms, merchandising guides, price lists — as PDFs and images, and web links. These open from the network, so you need signal.

Notes

A free-text note for anything worth recording about the visit — a conversation with the manager, a one-off issue, a promo that landed badly. Notes are part of a visit’s record, so they need an open visit too.

Summary

This visit, as recorded: its status, how long you have been in store, the forms filed, the decisions still open. Nothing here is a score — it counts only what was actually recorded.

About this shop

Below the tabs, what the business has recorded about this store beyond the sales figures — delivery days, a contact, “ring the bell at the back gate”. You can propose a correction to any of it, or use my position to correct where the pin sits: both go to the office as a request, a manager approves or declines, and you are told which. Nothing is rewritten silently, and nothing tracks where you are — a position is captured only on that one tap, as a property of the shop.

Work and Stats

Work lists every open decision across your stores, grouped by store and ordered by the money at risk, with the count of cards measured another way beside it. Filter by severity, open a store from its group.

Stats is your own read on the run — visits completed and stores visited today, this week or this month; how many of the visits you booked were completed; the decisions open across your territory and the rand at risk; and where that work sits, store by store. It counts visit records and decisions; it is not a rating.

A visit, start to finish

1. Open Route and tap the store you’ve arrived at.
2. Read the header — open decisions, rand at risk, store health — to know what kind of visit this is.
3. Start the visit.
4. Work the Win List top to bottom. Fix what you can; dismiss, with a reason, what no longer applies.
5. Count the shelf on the key category.
6. File any forms the visit calls for, with photos where they help.
7. Write up an order or a quote if the manager wants stock or a price.
8. Add a note for anything the system can’t capture on its own.
9. Complete the visit and move on — the Route tab reads it as done.

How your work feeds back

Everything you file in KeyLink reaches the office. A shelf count becomes the store’s health score and feeds the Perfect Store hub; a form shows under Form results; an order or quote appears in Sales documents; a dismissal and its reason sit on the decision for anyone to read. The decision itself closes only when the data confirms the fix — and afterwards KeyOne compares the store against untreated peers to say whether acting actually helped.

DiagramYour store visits are the 'Act' step that closes KeyOne's loop

Reps & coverage

Behind your route sits the office’s Field Team view, which records rep coverage — which reps look after which outlets — and each rep’s open decisions, rand at risk and next visit. A manager can book a visit for you from there; it appears in your Visits list marked as scheduled by your manager.

Tips for in-store use

Install it first. Add KeyLink to your home screen so it opens full-screen and loads fast — no hunting through browser tabs in the aisle.

Start the visit before you count. Counts, forms and notes are filed against the visit you are in the store for; without one open there is nowhere to put them, and the tab will tell you so.

Blank is not zero. If you did not look at a product, leave it blank. A zero says the shelf was empty.

Watch the offline banner, not your signal bars. As long as the count of saved changes is falling, your work is landing.

Common pitfalls

• Looking for a “resolve” button. There isn’t one, on purpose. Dismiss with a reason, or let the data close the card.
• Treating the route’s kilometres as navigation. They are an estimate for planning the day. Use Directions for the drive.
• Writing up an order without checking the shelf. Nothing is pre-filled; the quantity is yours.
• Assuming nothing saved while offline. It did. Reconnect and the banner clears itself.

For terms used here, see the Glossary. For quick answers, see the FAQ.

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