I think we will end up doing a bit of a mix of the two. Obviously the contacts pertaining to assets and operating environments should be Sites. We have a few other random things like security guards/camera security that are more about building management. Currently it's a record in the KB. Perhaps it should be moved to the extra info in the Site record for the building/site concerned, now that I think more about it.

Yes, this is one way of achieving this. Basically you'd be linking multiple clients to the same job, and then changing the primary client to reflect where the job is.

Here's another way that might work.

1. Create a new staff member, or even skillgroup (or both) that represents the vendor
2. When the job is escalated, assign the job to that staff member, or skillgroup. At this stage it may also be helpful to change the status of the job to something like "Awaiting vendor reply", or "Vendor action" etc.
3. When the job is finished with the vendor, re-assign it back to your internal staff member for further action.

Another way might be to create a unique job status that relates to each unique vendor and change the status of the job to reflect this.

Personally, I like the Staff member/Skillgroup option for the following reasons.

1. It physically moves the job into another job queue which makes it easier to see what each staff member has, and what each vendor has
2. It allows you to create Priority Manager profiles that target that staff member / skillgroup to perform additional escation work such as email reminders, or "Hey, what's happinging to that job - you've had it now for x weeks!"
3. It allows a finer level of reporting.
4. it also allows your vendors to start using the HelpMaster Pro web interface to receive work, update their job and re-assign it back once finished.

This method does have drawback if you have lots of vendors. You can end up having a lot of "Staff members".

Anyway, that's just a few ideas off the top of my head. I hope it's useful.

Best regards,

Rod