D365 Field Service: Improved Work Order Experience (preview)

There have been so many exiting new features in 2023 release wave 2, and it feels like new features are making it to preview almost every week! The features I am discussing today (yes you read that right, this line item is not just limited to 1 feature, but instead comes with a whole bunch of new and exiting features and updates!) are the ones that are related to the ‘Improved Work Order Experience’ item that you can find under ‘Optimize Service Operations’ in the 2023 Release Wave 2 notes. This feature introduces an updated user experience when it comes to managing work orders. Besides managing work orders, the features related to this new experience will also provide end users with more information related to work orders, bookings and other related data! Obviously since this is a part of 2023 Release Wave 2, you will need to have this update installed before you can test this out. Make sure you do this on a sandbox environment and not a production environment!

Work Order View

The first thing I wanted to mention is that we have a new work order view that is currently in preview. I didn’t have to enable anything for the view to show up, so you should be able to navigate to it from the work order view selector. The view is called ‘Work Orders(preview)’. The view itself is not different from any of the other views in the system, but the PCF control is. In order to use the new PCF control, you will need to click on the ‘Show as’ button on the command bar of the work order list and select ‘Work Orders(preview)’. It looks like this control is very similar to the power app grid control that we’ve had for a while now. In the view we can view the color coded values in any option set type of fields, but we can also update information inline if needed. Another feature that is part of this control is the option to open one (or multiple) work orders in a side pane. You can do this by hovering over a work order in the list, which will show an icon allowing you to open the work order in the side pane.

Once the work order opens in the side pane you’ll notice it shows the work order icon on the right side of the screen. If you have multiple work orders open, you can switch back and forth between them by clicking on the icon. You’ll also notice the work order opens in a new work order form.

Work Order Forms

After doing some research I found that there is are two new forms introduced as part of this update. One of these forms will open in the side pane when clicking the side pane icon from the work order list. The name of this form is ‘Work Order Light(preview)’, and as you might have suspected, this is a main form type. This is good news, as once this goes GA we should be able to modify the form to our needs.
You’ll notice when the form opens in the side pane, that there are two tabs that are visible, the ‘General’ tab, which shows us work order details such as the status of the work order, priority, service account, etc. and the ‘Booking’ tab which shows us information regarding the booking. Depending on the status of the work order, the information here will be different.

• For unscheduled work orders you’ll see booking suggestions within the date/times populated in the date/time promised columns, and of course only resources that meet the characteristics of the work order will be shown. Below the suggestions you’ll notice a ‘Find Availability’ button that will take you straight to the schedule board/scheduling assistant.
• When a scheduled work order is opened in the side pane, you’ll see details regarding the resource that has been booked for the work order, the date and time of the booking, the duration of the booking and the estimated travel time.
• For completed work orders the information shown on this tab is a summary related to the completed work. I actually really like how this data is visualized in the form! We can see the service date, resolution (if any was provided), product and services used, duration and estimates vs actuals related to cost, price and duration. There is even a button to print a report, which will pull up the bookable resource booking in the reporting form.

The second new form is called ‘Work Order (preview)’ and has the same booking information as mentioned above, but in this form you’ll notice this information is sitting in the ‘Booking’ section on the ‘General’ tab. The ‘Details’ section in the General tab shows some details on the work order, like status, priority, service account, work order type, incident type, etc.

When you scroll further down you’ll see the ‘Financial’ section which shows information related to the billing account, whether or not the work order is taxable, the pricelist and not-to-exceed limits.
The second tab on this form is the ‘Products and Services’ tab. This tab shows data related to the products and services related to this work order. You’ll notice the views look a bit different as well with buttons for ‘Products’ and ‘Services’. Both grids have details like status, pricing and estimate information.
The ‘Tasks’ tab shows all the related work order service tasks, this also has a new look, there the progress column shows a check mark next to the tasks that have been completed. Service tasks that have an inspection tied to it, also show the inspection result on the grid. If you hover over the products, services or task lines, you’ll notice the side pane icon will show up here as well. Lastly, the ‘Reference’ tab shows data related to knowledge articles, Microsoft Guides and any media from the timeline. Knowledge articles can also be viewed in a side pane by clicking the side pane button on the far left side.
I love these improvements to Field Service! It does look a lot cleaner and fresh! I am hoping some of these UI changes are also coming to the other apps! I hope you enjoyed reading this article! Be sure to check in again next week for a new article or subscribe here to never miss another post!