2021 Release Wave 2 | Part 3: Field Service

It’s August and that means that now have the ability to install the early release features of 2021 Release Wave 2 in a sandbox environment for testing! For the folks who are not familiar with Microsoft’s release cadence, Microsoft Power Platform and Customer Engagement apps (Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Marketing, Dynamics 365 Project Operations, etc.) deliver two major releases per year which provide offer new capabilities and added functionality. These releases occur in April and October. Customers have the ability to opt in for early access to try out and test some of these features. I have been writing a series of articles on the new features in 2021 Release Wave 2. In this article I will discuss some of the most exciting new features and updates that are coming for Dynamics 365 Field Service. If you missed any of the other articles I’ve written so far I would definitely advise to check them out!

Resource Scheduling

There are some pretty nice updates in resource scheduling and of course the new schedule board is one of items that got some more improvements and updates. The schedule board settings are now available on the schedule board, which is a great improvement. Users can now make changes to the schedule board without having to switch back to the legacy schedule board. Users can access the settings by clicking on the gear icon on the top right side of the schedule board which opens a mini window that allows users to make changes to the time zone, working time (this is the timeframe that shows on the schedule board), time resolution, row height of the scheduling slots, whether to show cancelled bookings or not, applying the territory filter or turning it off and to show travel duration or not. In order to access the additional settings users can click on the ‘All board settings’ link on the bottom of the window. This will open a window that lays on top of the schedule board and allows for additional settings to be changed.

Some additional updates that made it to the new schedule board are some of the things that we had available to us in the legacy schedule board. We can now add new tabs to the schedule board, and we can move the tab order around as well. The ‘move bookings’ button is back, which allows us to pick a date range and a booking status, after which the system will automatically move all the bookings that meet the criteria to a different date. I have missed this one! The details panel and the booking alerts panel are now available on the new schedule board too! If you look at the version of the new schedule board prior to this update, you’ll notice there was an eye icon on the top right of the schedule board which allowed us to view bookings in more of a list view. The icon is gone, but there is now an option to either show bookings on the schedule board by selecting ‘Gantt’ (you’ll see this option on the right side of the hourly/daily/weekly/monthly view on the schedule board) and if you want to see the data in a list view, you can change the gantt setting to list. One of the most important things (at least to me) is the ability to use the scheduling assistant from the new schedule board. You’ll notice when you highlight any of the requirements in the list below the board, that the ‘find availability’ button will show up. At the time that I am writing this article the scheduling of resource groups, crews, pools and multi-day work orders is not working in my early access environment yet, but I confirmed with Microsoft that this is coming in this release. This is will also be available for early access when the next couple of updates make it’s way to the early access environments. So exciting!

The schedule board will also be more open to customizations; we now have the ability to extend the functionality in the hourly view via different client-side extensions such as scripts, stylesheets, and localization. Now I am not a developer so I don’t know exactly how this is done, but it’s nice to see that this is possible. Another way to customize the schedule board is to display custom fields from the work order or requirement on the booking or booking alert that is displayed on hourly view of the new schedule board. These custom fields can also displayed as a filter on the schedule board and taken into consideration when finding the best resources. Lastly we can now create our own JavaScript which can be executed before the creation or update of a booking record on the hourly view of the new schedule board! Very exciting stuff!!

With this release we now have the ability to set work hours through an API programmatically. This was an idea that was submitted by Diego Pecharroman, which just proves again that Microsoft is listening to what customers and partners are suggesting.

Embedded Microsoft Teams

I wrote about this in my previous article as well, this is functionality that will be available throughout the application. Users can turn this functionality on by navigating to the ‘App Settings’ area in the Sales Hub app, and then clicking on ‘Chat and Collaboration’. Besides turning on the embedded experience there are some additional settings that can be turned on. This feature will embed the Teams application directly into Dynamics 365. Users can click on the chat icon on the top right of the screen to bring up the Teams pane and start a chat with one or multiple people. When the Teams pane is opened while on a record, users will be able to see their recent chats and above the recent chat section they will be able to view all chats that are linked to the record. Teams chat in Field Service will have a ‘Welcome Card’ form for when a linked chat is started from a work order. This will push data from the work order into the chat as it’s initiated. Unfortunately this was also not in preview, so I wasn’t able to try this myself!

New Customer Experience Homepage

Unfortunately this feature is not in early access so I wasn’t able to test this or check out what is looks like. This is a new portal experience build on Power Apps Portals which can be accesses online by your customers. Only customers who are invited to the experience by service organizations can access the portal after registering. Customers will be able to use the new customer experience homepage to track the status of a technician (using the track my tech functionality), review service history, and schedule a visit (this can be done by the self scheduling feature that went in Public Preview in April). If you want to learn more about the self-scheduling capabilities, which go live in October 2021, you can view the article I wrote on this topic here). This is really going to be the center of self-service for Field Service organization customers.

Work Order form simplification

There have been some minor changes to the work order forms. In order to simplify the time commitments on a work order the ‘date window start’ and ‘date window end’ fields will be hidden by default. Users can work with the ‘Time from’ and ‘Time to’ fields going forward. Prior to this release when a work order was set to complete while there were related bookings that had not yet been completed, an error message was shown. In the new release the end user will see a pop-up window that gives more details on why the action can’t be completed and allows them to cancel or complete the associated bookings and change the work order status to complete.

Functional Locations and Asset Tree improvements

Here is another feature that is part of the early release. I loved when Microsoft rolled out Functional locations in 2020 Release Wave 2. Functional locations allows users to build out a hierarchy of physical spaces at a customer location, without having to use the account entity. We already had the ability to search through the hierarchy of functional locations, but if you hadn’t checked the ‘show assets’ box, you needed to click search again. This has changed, as the checking of the ‘show assets’ box will relaunch the search. You’ll also notice that below the search box it now shows the number of matches the system has found for your query. Lastly you’ll immediately see the match as it’s colored yellow on the screen. Lastly you’ll notice a ‘+’ and ‘-‘ button below ‘matches found’. These can be used to collapse and expand multiple sections at once. Love the updates!!

‘New Feature’ Spotlight in Field Service get started hub

You all know about the new Field Service ‘Get Started’ hub that was introduced to us in 2021 Release Wave 1. This features adds some functionality to the Get Started hub in Field Service. The ‘New Feature’ spotlight is something that is not in early access and is currently scheduled for GA in October 2021. This feature is updating the spotlight at the top of the Get Started’ hub where new features are introduced, accompanied with documentation and videos that users can access to learn more about the feature(s).

Field Service Mobile Enhancements

Another great new feature is the ability to change the fields on the bookings control in the Field Service mobile app. By default the fields that are showing are Account, Address, Incident Type, Booking Status, Duration and Start Time but up to 3 additional fields can be added in the new release. For steps on how to do this take a look at the in-depth article I wrote about this here. This feature will be available in the early access in v8.8.48.23. Some of the mobile usability enhancements are the ability to use native controls for date and time fields in the app. This means that if you are setting or updating a date/time field in the app, you’ll be able to use the same controls that come with the operating system. (I.E Andriod, iOS, Windows)
Microsoft created a new Field Service mobile app for Windows 10! This feature is currently in preview. If you want to learn more about the windows app, take a look at this article I wrote on the topic!
Lastly I wanted to mention the ability to use mixed reality annotations in the Field Service Mobile app. Meaning if a technician needs to draw on an image, and store that image, this can now be done!


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