About This Guide
Things occasionally don't go as expected — an email doesn't arrive, a status push fails, a ticket won't create. This guide collects the most common issues in LocateOps with quick, practical fixes. Each section is self-contained: jump to the one that matches your symptom.
Many problems trace back to one root cause: a ticket was completed but never uploaded. If something “didn't send,” check that first — see the last section.
An Email Didn't Arrive
A customer or excavator says they never received the completion notice.
Check, in order
- Was the ticket uploaded? Completing a ticket only queues the email — it sends when someone clicks Upload Tickets. If it was never uploaded, the email was never sent. (See the Uploading Tickets guide.)
- Check spam / junk. Completion emails carry a PDF attachment and sometimes land in spam. Have the recipient check there and mark it “not spam.”
- Verify the recipient address. Open the ticket and check the excavator email. For a private ticket this came from the customer's contact email — if it's blank or wrong, that's the problem.
- Fix and re-send. Correct the email on the ticket (or the customer), then upload again.
A private ticket whose customer has no email is skipped silently at upload time — the upload result will show it wasn't emailed. Always capture customer emails.
If you're unsure whether an email was ever attempted, an administrator can check the email logs (Logs → Emails) for the send status.
A Status Push Failed
A completion didn't make it back to the call centre, or the push stats show failures.
What to do
- Open the Maintenance tab (Logs → OneCall). Find the ticket's row.
- Read its state. Pending = never uploaded (upload it). Retry pending = it'll retry itself. Failed = needs you.
- Open a failed row to read the error message.
- Fix the root cause if there is one — most often a call-centre credential issue — then retry the row, or use Run Push Queue Now to flush everything ready.
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| All of one company's pushes fail | Bad / expired call-centre credential | Re-enter the credential (site admin); retry. |
| Pushes stuck in Pending | Completions never uploaded | Upload, or Run Push Queue Now. |
| Occasional failures that clear up | Call centre briefly unreachable | Usually self-retries — no action. |
See the Maintenance Tab guide for a full walk-through of the queue and its controls.
Can't Create a Ticket — Utilities List Is Empty
On the create form, there are no utilities to choose, and you can't get past the utilities step.
This happens when your company's station-code catalog hasn't been set up yet. The fix is built in: the create form always offers a Private utility option (“In-system · no call center”). Select it and you can create the ticket.
- On the create form, scroll the Utilities list to the Private option.
- Select it. (Private is mutually exclusive with real codes — selecting it clears any real codes, and vice versa.)
- Finish and create the ticket as normal.
Longer term, a site administrator should onboard your station codes so real utilities appear — but you're never blocked from creating tickets in the meantime. See the Creating Tickets guide.
A Saved Search Returns Nothing
You run a saved search and the board comes back empty.
Check these
- Are the conditions too narrow? A search combining many conditions (status AND source AND date AND locator) can legitimately match nothing. Loosen one condition at a time.
- Date conditions. A date range that's in the past (or future) may simply have no tickets. Confirm the dates are what you intend.
- Cancelled tickets are hidden from every view except the Cancelled quick view — if you expected to see a cancelled ticket, that's why.
- Is it the right search? Mine vs Universal searches can have similar names; make sure you opened the one you meant.
Rebuild the filter from scratch with a single condition, confirm it returns results, then add conditions back one at a time to find the one that's over-narrowing.
A Ticket Seems to Have Disappeared
Check the Cancelled quick view. Call centres cancel tickets routinely, and cancelled tickets are hidden from every other view. LocateOps never truly deletes a ticket, so it's there if it was cancelled. Also clear any active search or quick view that might be filtering it out.
The Page Won't Refresh After an Action
If completing, deleting, or another action seems to “do nothing” — the action ran but the screen didn't update — try refreshing the page. The underlying change almost certainly saved. If it happens repeatedly on a specific screen, report it to your administrator with the page name so it can be investigated.
The Big One: Forgotten Upload
This deserves its own section because it's the single most common source of “it didn't work” reports.
Completing a ticket does not send anything. Uploading sends. If completions aren't reaching the call centre or customers, the most likely reason — by far — is that nobody clicked Upload Tickets. For call-centre tickets, an unsent report is also a missed legal obligation.
How to prevent and catch it:
- Upload at the end of every job or shift — make it a habit, like packing up.
- Managers: use “Upload all completed tickets” at end of day to sweep up anything missed.
- Watch the dashboard reconciliation banner — amber means the call centre sent locates you don't have.
- Check the Maintenance tab for a backlog of Pending rows — those are completed-but-unsent reports.
If in doubt about whether your work went out, the Maintenance tab is the source of truth — it shows exactly what's still waiting.
Quick Reference
| Symptom | First thing to check |
|---|---|
| Email didn't arrive | Was it uploaded? Then spam, then the excavator/customer email. |
| Push failed | Maintenance tab — Pending (upload) vs Failed (retry). |
| Can't pick a utility | Use the Private option. |
| Saved search empty | Loosen conditions; check dates; Cancelled is hidden. |
| Ticket vanished | Check the Cancelled quick view. |
| Action “did nothing” | Refresh the page; the change likely saved. |
| Nothing's being sent | Did anyone click Upload Tickets? |
When to Escalate
Contact your administrator (or, for platform issues, the site administrator) when:
- A call-centre credential needs re-entering and you're not a site admin.
- Push failures persist after a retry and the error points at configuration.
- Station codes need onboarding so real utilities appear.
- A screen consistently fails to refresh after actions (note the page name).
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