D365 Field Service: Trades

Another feature for Dynamics 365 Field Service that is part of 2023 release wave 1 is the ability to use trades to group services together. There are a lot of benefits to using trades in D365 Field Service, but before I get into that, let me first explain what trades represents in Dynamics 365 Field Service. As you probably already suspected, trades are the types of services that your organization provides to their customers. Trades allow you to group multiple services under a category. Some example trades are plumbing, HVAC services, roofing, etc. By using trades in Dynamics 365 Field Service, we can associate trades with incident types, accounts and locations to track which trades your organization provides. This way you won’t accidentally provide electrical services while you’re only hired to perform HVAC work.

Functionality

This solution has two major components to it, the trades table and the trade coverages table. I already explained what trades represent above, so let’s discuss the trade coverage table. The purpose of this table is to track which trades are covered (or excluded) at various customer sites. In Dynamics 365 Field Service this table is a manual N:N which ties accounts, functional locations and trades together. This will allows us to see which trades are covered from an account and/or functional location perspective and will help insure that the right type of service is provided at those locations. For example if your organization only provides HVAC services to a specific customer, we probably shouldn’t have the ability to create a work order for plumbing services for this customer, right?

Validation Logic

This is where the logic of the solution comes in. If trades are enabled and configured, the system will run a check when new work orders are created. During this check it will look for the coverage I discussed above, meaning it will check the service account and/or functional location on the work order, to see if they are covered. For example I have a client (account) A. Datum Corporation that has a trade coverage for HVAC services, but they are excluded for plumbing services. Someone is trying to create a work order for plumbing services, then a warning message will show on the top of the work order stating plumbing services are not included. Keep in mind this is not preventing users to create a work order, they can still do that.

I noticed that this message only shows when you are creating the work order from the MAIN FORM. If you are creating the work order from the quick create form, the message WILL NOT BE SHOWN!!! Also, when you open the work order after it’s been created, the message will not show.
The other important thing to understand is that if there are no trade coverage records associated for a customer, the system will assume all trades are covered and therefor no warnings will be shown on work order creation. If you want to exclude a trade for an account and/or functional location as mentioned in the above example, you can create a trade coverage record to exclude that particular service trade. Lastly, also keep in mind that if trade coverages are created where only the account is populated and the functional location is not, then the system will assume all functional locations for that account are covered. For more examples check out Microsoft’s learn article here.

Enable Trades & Trade Coverages

This is another feature that needs to be enabled before you use it. You’ll need to go to the settings area in the Field Service app, then navigate to the ‘Field Service Settings’ on the top of the sitemap. On the ‘Work Order/Booking’ tab you’ll notice a flip switch for ‘Trades’. Once you set it to ‘yes ‘On; and save the setting, you’ll notice another ‘flip’ switch appear for Trade Coverages. You’ll need to turn this on too. After saving the setting and refreshing your screen you should see ‘Trades’ and ‘Trade Coverages’ on the sitemap of the ‘Settings’ area.

Configuration

Create trades

The first thing you’ll need to do is create Trade rows. Change the area to ‘Settings’ and click ‘Trades’ on the sitemap. Click ‘+New’ to create a new trade. In my instance I created trades for HVAC, Electrical and Plumbing. You can add as many trades as you want.

Link trades to incident types

The next step in the process is to link trades to the incident types in Dynamics 365 Field Service. You can do this by opening an existing incident type (or creating a new one) from the settings area and opening the ‘Details’ tab on the incident type. You can enter the trade in the ‘Trade’ lookup on the incident type. In my case I moved the ‘Trade’ lookup to the general tab which is why you see it under the ‘general’ tab. Linking trades to incident types, allows you to categorize your incident types. Allowing you to view all incident types and the trade category they belong to.

Configure trade coverages

As I mentioned above, this table will show whether or not a particular coverage is available for an account and/or functional location. You can create these rows by navigating to the settings area and clicking on the ‘Trade Coverages’ sitemap item. From here you’ll select the account and/or functional location, the type of coverage (coverage or exclusion) and the trade.

Keep in mind that you can only select one trade per incident type. As I mentioned before, if an account and/or functional location doesn’t have coverage for a particular trade, make sure you create a trade coverage record with the ‘exclusion’ type. 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!