D365 Field Service: New Schedule Board

Microsoft has redesigned the schedule board for field service. Partners and customers were able to sign up for a private preview of the new and improved schedule board a few months ago, but now the preview has gone public. Keep in mind that a preview is not yet ready for production, as it will have limited capabilities during this time. Other things to consider: during this preview the only language available for this schedule board is English. The new schedule board will only be visible and accessible in the Resource Scheduling App, it will not be available in the Field Service App during this preview. The new schedule board is only supported on the following browsers: Edge, Chrome and Firefox. Now let’s take a look!!

The new schedule board is a Power Apps Component Framework (PCF) control, which makes it a lot more flexible and easier to support. This also means that you can enable the preview by navigating to the schedule board entity and turn the control on by clicking on the control tab of the entity, selecting the ‘Schedule Board Control(Experimental)’ and changing the value to ‘Enable Preview’. Make sure you save and publish. You can also change this setting by logging into the Resource Scheduling app, go to the settings area, then click on Administration and Modify Schedule settings, which will open the schedule board settings entity.

As mentioned above, in order to access the new schedule board you have to open it from the Resource Scheduling App. You’ll see a preview on/off switch in the top right corner which allows you to toggle between the legacy and the new schedule board. Since this is a preview, the only view that is currently available is the hourly view, but that should be plenty to start testing it out and getting a feel of how it works.

I have to say I love the new modern look of the new schedule board! The first thing I noticed is that the schedule board itself loads a lot faster than the legacy schedule board. When you switch between the different tabs it also loads a lot faster. The legend that used to be on the bottom can now be popped out from the right side by clicking the icon on the left side of the gear icon, which makes the schedule board look cleaner and less crowded on the bottom of the screen. Besides booking statuses, the legend now also shows priorities. Priorities are visible on the top right corner on a scheduled booking on the schedule board. The gear icon is where you can change the timezone of the schedule board. At this time there are no other settings visible here. The filters are still on the left hand side and can be expanded and collapsed like they can on the legacy schedule board.

I also noticed the bookings on the schedule board are slightly transparent which allows users to see the start and end times of a booking a lot easier. The lines on the left side on the booking, which represent the travel time are not as thick as they used to be and they are easy to understand. Unfortunately this preview schedule board doesn’t have the ability to use the scheduling assistant as of yet, but it does support dragging and dropping work orders. When you drag a work order on the schedule board, it shows a dotted line on the area you’re about to drop it. Once you drop the requirement on the board it does take a few seconds for it to appear on the schedule board. The first time I dropped it, it looked like I hadn’t booked the requirement, which was not the case. After a few seconds the booking showed on the board. Feel free to click on the gif below to view dragging and dropping a requirement on the schedule board.

I noticed that even though I have enabled the auto-update booking travel feature, (which became available in version 8.6) the travel time is currently not calculated when you drag and drop a work order on new schedule board, which is probably also related to the fact that it’s in preview. I also wasn’t able to access the resource card from the schedule board, another feature that’s not yet available. I definitely recommend enabling the new schedule board so you can take a look for yourself and play around with it. Even when you enable the new schedule board, the legacy schedule board will still be available in the Dynamics 365 Field Service App, and you can toggle between the new and legacy schedule board in the Resource Scheduling App.

I hope you enjoyed this post! Be sure to check in again next week where I’ll be discussing the inspection preview for Dynamics 365 Field Service or subscribe here to never miss another post!