D365 Field Service: Mobile Booking Maps
Yes there is another feature that has been added to Dynamics 365 Field Service! This feature became generally available on 5/21 for North American environments. So what exactly is it? Well I can tell you it’s something that some of my customers have been asking for quite some time now, and now it’s here! Booking maps allows Dynamics 365 Field Service frontline workers (these are resources in Dynamics 365 Field Service that are tied to a ‘user’ record in Dynamics 365) to view a list of their assigned bookings on a map instead of a list view or calendar view.
They can also perform some actions from the map screen, which I will discuss in more detail below. There are some settings that you need to turn on, but after that the booking maps should become available for all the Field Service resources that are a type of ‘User’ aka Front Line workers.
In order to enable booking maps, you need to turn on ‘Geospatial services’ in your environment. You can do this by navigating to admin.powerplatform.com. On the left side of the screen you will notice the navigation item ‘environments’, which you will have to click to see a list of all of your environments in the tenant. (If you have proper access levels.) Click on the environment for which you want to turn on booking maps. On the ribbon, click on the ‘settings’ tab. Expand ‘Products’ and click on ‘Features’. On the right side of the screen you’ll see the on/off button for Geospatial Services. Make sure you set this to ‘On’. When you set the slider to ‘On’ a pop-up screen will open, check the box to agree to the terms of service and click ‘Enable’. Make sure you scroll down on the page and save your changes.
In order to see the booking maps you’ll have to schedule a work order to a user-type of resource and log into the Field Service Mobile application as that user. When the user navigates to the bookings section in the mobile app they’ll notice the ability to switch the view by clicking on the ‘Agenda’ , ‘Day’ or ‘Map’ button on the top left side of the screen. Clicking the map button accesses the booking maps functionality in the mobile Field Service app. This will show the bookable bookings as a pin on a map. The different colors of the pin represent different statuses of the bookings:
- Blue Pin: Bookings with a status of Scheduled or any custom status
- Green Pin: Bookings with a status of traveling, in progress or on break
- Grey Pin: Completed or cancelled bookings
Users can zoom in or zoom out on the map by pinching the map between two fingers or by using the + and – buttons on the map. If a user wants to view the bookings for a different day, all they need to do is select a different date on the date ribbon above the map and the map will now show the bookable resource bookings for the day selected.
Besides being able to view the bookings on the calendar, there are some additional things a field service frontline worker can do from the map view. When clicking on any of the pins, details of the booking will show in a pop-up window on the screen. From here the user can see some details of the booking like the name of the service account, booking status, time and address.
When the user clicks on the address this will open the turn by turn navigation app on their mobile device. If the user clicks on ‘View Details’ the booking will be opened and the user will be able to review and/or update the booking. If there are multiple bookings at the same location users will see a number vs a pin, indicating there are multiple bookings at the same address. (see above image) When a user clicks on the number, they will see a list of the bookings. From there they can select a booking to view details and to start the turn by turn navigation.
It is important to understand that even though we can use the field service mobile app offline, unfortunately the booking maps functionality will not work if the mobile device doesn’t have access to the internet. If the mobile device is set to offline mode while the mobile device still has internet access, the booking maps will work. This means that without internet access, the booking maps will not be available in the app.
Another thing I wanted to mention is that the booking maps are only available in the mobile app. This means that if you access Field Service Mobile from a browser, you will not see the booking maps functionality, you will have to use the field service mobile app instead.
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