AI in the Field: Empowering Technicians

There’s a real gap between knowing AI exists and knowing exactly which prompts your technicians should be using tomorrow morning. Hear from Madelyn Bowyer, UpKeep’s Customer Education Manager, and Spencer Nelson, Lead Product Manager behind Nova, open this 35-minute session by naming that gap directly — and closing it with a live demo.

The first half of the session is the technician’s reality: the mid-job interruptions, the 20-minute asset history searches, the end-of-day data pile-up that turns incomplete notes into incomplete decisions. The second half is six specific Nova capabilities that eliminate each one of those friction points — work order prioritization, voice work order creation, instant asset history, AI-assisted diagnostics, hands-free job completion, and real-time parts and inventory lookup.

Spencer then runs every capability live in the mobile app, playing the role of a traveling technician working through a real shift at the Hermosa Beach location — from morning prioritization through HVAC diagnosis, parts lookup, and hands-free closeout. The session closes with a three-step adoption playbook built around what’s actually worked for UpKeep customers rolling out mobile AI to their field teams.

“In the space of five to ten minutes, we’re able to check parts, create work orders, log time — and we did that just with our voice and from chat.”
— Spencer Nelson, Staff Product Manager, UpKeep — on the full-circle Nova demo

What You’ll Learn:

• The real friction points in a technician’s day — mid-job documentation interruptions, 20-minute asset history searches, touchscreen data entry with gloves on, and the end-of-shift data pile-up that degrades record quality.

• The six Nova capabilities built specifically to remove that friction: work order prioritization, voice work order creation, instant asset history, AI-assisted diagnostics, hands-free job completion, and real-time parts and inventory lookup.

• How Nova acts on behalf of the user, inheriting their permissions — so if a technician can’t delete records, neither can Nova — and how that works across single and multi-location accounts.

• How to use Nova on mobile to reference repair manuals and PDFs attached to assets, ask it to fill out checklists, and dictate notes hands-free throughout a job without breaking workflow.

• A three-step adoption playbook: start with your most mobile-ready technicians as AI champions, begin with one workflow rather than all six, and show your team in person — because seeing is believing.