Dynamics 365 Field Service HowTo - Part 7

Dynamics 365 Field Service HowTo:

Today we will write about Resources part of Field Service. Resources are made of following components:

This article belongs to the Field Service Series: 

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

 Resource

•     Resources
•     Characteristics
•     Categories
•     Pay Types
•     Proficiency Models
•     Work Hours Templates
•     Requirement Group Templates
•     Requirement Statuses

Booking Settings

•     Booking Statuses
•     Booking Rules
•     Fulfilment Preferences

Administration

•     Booking Setup Metadata Wizard
•    Scheduling Parameters
   

Resources is showing by default active resources. There are also visible contact resources, frontline resources, resources without role and many more views to use for easier work. Resources can be various things, contact, users, account, crew, equipment, facility, pool and a custom one if you create it in Field Service settings menu.

Characteristics is awesome part of Resources, which is used to describe what are resources capable of. Characteristics are actually separated entity in system with type and are connected to Resource. Rating value which is used to determine how good resource is in work is also separate entity in system. From above written, we can see that every connection to Characteristics is entity related(lookup).

Categories are also known as Resource Categories, which are used to created or delete categories of work. These categories are later connected with people or items. You can set target utilization and billing type to categories.

Pay Types are something that every employee ever wants to know about(at least I want). It is holding data of how is someone paid in special situations like traveling, overtime, dangerous parts of job or in normal situations like normal working hours, break etc.

Proficiency Models are rating models and they are attributed to Bookable Resources. In a few blog’s back I have written about Bookable Resources and how they are related to Proficiency Models(at Bookable Resource entity known as Rating Value). There is min and max value of model and quick view grid with related resources.

Work Hours Templates are as simple as that, work hour templates. They defines “from-to” time of work for specific resource.

Requirement Group Templates are used to create template for requirement groups, which can be anything, from people to objects. If you remember, we used them on our work orders in first two blog’s of these blog series to define who does what and when, with which skillset and so on.

Requirement Statuses, as the name says, statuses for requerements. Nothing WOW, completely normal part of menu.

Now we move to menu part which is Booking Settings. First item here is Booking Statuses, which are used as statuses for resources. 

As we can see, there is name of status, which is show in menu and we can choose on some other form and real status below, which is Canceled. So this status is translated as “Nobody showed, job is canceled”.

Booking Rules, as the name says, is holding rules for bookings. These rules are custom rules for specific situations. They consist of name, method name and web resource. They can be later used in CRM actions and be shown to user if specific criteria is met.
 

More on Booking Rules can be found here

Fulfillment Preferences are used to alter how schedule assistant results are displayed. For example changing display from 9:59 AM to 10:00 AM for easier use. You can set intervals for 1 min, 15 min, 30 min, 1 hour etc. and after that set at what time does interval start.

More on Fulfillment Prefrences can be found here

Last part of today blog is Administration for Resources. First item here is Booking Setup Metadata Wizard. This wizard is used to set various timings in specific scenarios. It could depend is it a project, service order, work order and so on. I will take an example of service appointment.

Here we can see a lot data, durations, statuses, special occasions(eg. Cancel Booking when moving) and attribute mappings. Pretty much awesome feature to limit and automate booking process for most of your organization.

Scheduling Parameters are used to give a more detailed look when scheduling is done. In example below we have Resource Scheduling, and we can se some settings like when scheduling board is refreshed, are appointment included when scheduling, is there connection to maps, radius units and more. You can create you own custom Scheduling Parameter, because it is not same scheduling for example truck and a car.

I hope that with this blog I could give you more insight into Resources part of Field Service and how it works. After reading all blogs one by one, there is clear picture how complex and awesome Field Service is.

Have fun and stay safe :)