D365 Field Service Simplified Setups

It’s April and this means that 2021 Release Wave 1 production deployments have started! Not all of the features mentioned in the documentation have been enabled yet because the features for this release wave will be released from April 2021 through September 2021. The features that will go GA in April might not have been installed in your production environment yet because his actually happens on a schedule and depends on your tenant’s location. My environment is hosted in the North America region which means that the release wave will be installed on my production environment between Friday, April 23nd and Sunday, April 25th 2021. For other dates check out the deployment schedule here.

If you turned on the early release for 2021 Release wave 1 in your sandbox then you’ll notice that some (not all) of the new features that weren’t available in early release are now accessible in the app. A few of these features have to do with the simplified setup of frontline workers, work orders etc.
When you log into the Dynamics 365 Field Service app you’ll notice a ‘Get Started’ item on the sitemap. When you click on the item you’ll be taken to a page from where you can start setting up these field service related items. On the top of the screen you’ll notice a banner with two buttons. One button reads ‘Take a guided tour’ and will take you to a webpage which will take you through a self-guided demonstration regarding Connected Field Service. Here it the link to the page if you want to take a look at it. The other button reads ‘Watch video’ and takes you to a YouTube video on Dynamics 365 Field Service.

On the page itself you’ll see different options. The option available are:

• Set up frontline workers
• Create your Accounts
• Create your work orders
• Schedule your work orders

Setup Frontline Workers

This allows users to quickly configure frontline workers at once. Front line workers are bookable resources in the Field Service application that are a resource type of ‘user’. You can’t setup up other types of bookable resources through this screen. When I click on the ‘Set up’ button of the ‘Set up your frontline workers’ option, a quick create form will load. There is a ‘User’ lookup field that allows you to select one or multiple users. Below the ‘Users; field you’ll notice lookup fields for ‘Characteristics’, ‘Territories’, ‘Security role’,’Field Security Profile’ and ‘Mobile Offline Profile’. All of these lookups allow you to select multiple values, except for the ‘Mobile Offline Profile’ lookup. There is also a timezone field which allows you to set the time zone for the resources. On the bottom of the form there is a checkbox that allows you to send an email with a link to download the mobile application. Once you click ‘Save and Close’ the system will take you back to the same setup page and will create the resource in the background.

I noticed that if you’re running this process on a user that already has a resource record in the system, this resource record will be updated with the items that were selected in the ‘Characteristics’, ‘Territories’, ‘Security Role’,’Field Security Profile’ and ‘Mobile Offline Profile’ fields. So this process doesn’t just help you get resources setup in your environment very quickly, but also allows you to add items to existing resources!

Create your accounts

The idea behind the ‘create accounts’ option is so that users can create service accounts in the system without having to navigate away from this page. There is really nothing special here, when you click the ‘Create’ button it simply opens a quick create form for the account table. I would rather see the ability to import a list of accounts into the system as entering them one by one is still probably still going to take too much time. Maybe a link to the imports area? Or to the import templates so the data can be copied and pasted into the template and quickly uploaded?
There is also a ‘View All’ button next to this item which will take you to an account view in the application.

Create your work orders

Now let’s take a look at the ‘Create Work Orders’ section on the page. The ‘View All’ button will take you to a work orders view, just like we saw with the options mentioned above. When you click on the ‘Create’ button a new work order form loads which I haven’t seen before. This is so exciting! This form allows you to select the Service Account, Work Order Type and Pricelist. If the ‘Tax Exempt’ field on the account (selected in the account field on the work order form) is set to ‘No’, then you’ll also be able to populate the Sales Tax code on the form. You will notice that this form allows you to add work order service tasks, work order products and work order services on the fly! Right from the create form! No I don’t have to save the record first, I can add these items directly on the work order create form!
You’ll also notice an information icon next to the tasks, products and services. If you click on the icon an arrow with more information will show on the form. Now in my opinion the only thing that is missing on the new work order form is the Primary Incident type and maybe the customer asset field. I went looking for this form to see if we would be able to make changes to it and found it. The form is called ‘Work order create’ and it’s a main form.

Once you entered all the data in the work order form you have the option to click ‘Save and Close’ which closes the form and creates the work order. The second option is the ‘Save and Book’ button. When you click this button the ‘quick book’ form loads, allowing you to book the work order immediately. Keep in mind for this to work you will need to enable quick booking in Dynamics 365 Field Service. If you’re not sure how to enable the Quick Book functionality take a look at this article.

Schedule your work orders

The last option on the page is the ability to schedule work orders. There is only one button available for this item which reads ‘Schedule’. When you click on this button there isn’t anything special that happens, the system will take the user to the schedule board, from where they can start scheduling work orders.

Thoughts

I like the overall idea to have one place to manage some of the Field Service setups in the system. I like the ability to create and update resources from here, I definitely think this will save admins time. I also like the ability to create work orders and add tasks, products and services from within the create form. This will also save time. I hope you enjoyed this post! Be sure to check in again next week for a new article or subscribe here to never miss another post!