Enhanced mobile experience(preview) for D365 Field Service

There have been a lot of improvements to Dynamics 365 Field Service this year and I have loved every single one of them! However… One of my favorite improvements is the new mobile experience for field techs for Dynamics 365 Field Service. Yes, I am aware that this feature is not generally available yet, as it has been in preview since early November of 2023. So what is this preview feature all about?! The new mobile experience for Dynamics 365 Field Service has a brand-new user interface which gives the mobile app a fresh new look. There is a brand-new agenda view for bookings, an updated booking form with simplified grids for tasks, products and services and more! I spent quite some time experimenting with this new feature and am writing this article to share everything that I found! If you want to take a look at this preview feature yourself, then you’ll need to enable this feature in your environment. Keep in mind the preview will immediately be available in the Field Service mobile app! BUT…..before you enable the preview, make sure the mobile app is on the most recent version, and Dynamics 365 Field Service as well. The minimum Dynamics 365 Field Service version required for this preview feature is 8.8.95.25 and the minimum Field Service mobile app version is 13.23072.18 for iOS and 3.23072.18 for Android.

Enable New Mobile Experience Preview

Administrators can enable the new mobile experience from the Field Service Mobile app. I have to say I was a little surprised these settings are only available on the mobile app and not in the settings area of the Field Service app! Once you log into the Field Service app, you’ll need to navigate to the ‘Settings’ area after which you’ll see the ‘feature’ item on the sitemap. You’ll notice this page has only one tab, called ‘features’, which shows the booking maps feature and any preview features below it.

You’ll notice there are three settings you can enable from here:

• New Mobile Experience: When you switch this to ‘on’ the mobile experience will be enabled
• Copilot for New Mobile Experience(preview): This is another feature that is currently in preview. It’s called “AI-powered work order update’, and it allows Field Technicians to interact with Copilot in natural language after which Copilot can suggest updates to the booking record. Updates can be things like marking service tasks as completed, or marking products as used, etc.
• Copilot recap for Mobile(preview): When this is switched to ‘on’, Field Technicians will be able to try out the ‘work order recap functionality with copilot’ which is also currently in preview.

If you want to learn more about the two preview features I mentioned below, then make sure you check back next Tuesday, as I will be writing detailed articles on these features as well!

Preview Limitations

It is important to understand that there are some limitations with this preview. I noticed that if you enable the preview and use the Field Service mobile app for windows, then you are not in luck, as it doesn’t work. If you have a dashboard configured somewhere on the sitemap of the Field Service mobile app then don’t try to access it, as it will crash the mobile app. If you have a dashboard set as the first page, then it won’t even load the app correctly. I just saw a bunch of code on the screen and no ability to navigate anywhere. Please note Microsoft is aware of this and is working on a fix. Another thing to note is that offline mode is not supported during this preview phase. I am confident this will be added prior to GA.
If you are trying to figure out how to configure the booking form, or which booking form is used in the new interface then stop, because as mentioned here, customizations and configurations are not available during this preview. If you need to navigate back to the ‘classic’ interface, you have the option to do so.

New Booking Agenda

The first thing you’ll notice when you access the Field Service mobile app is the updated booking agenda. This is the first page that loads and you can navigate back to it at any time by clicking the home button on the bottom of the screen. This agenda (as the name already reveals) shows all the scheduled bookings for the logged in resource. I really like how the days on the agenda view have thick colored bars where today’s date is highlighted in blue and past and future dates are shown in grey. This makes it easier to see where a day starts and ends. The status field is pretty prominent on the view, allowing techs to quickly identify the status of each work order. Field Technicians can scroll up and down to view 180 days worth of bookings. This means past bookings (up to 90 days in the past) and future bookings (up to 90 days in the future from today’s date.) Any bookings outside that timeframe will not show up on the booking agenda.

Directions & Update Status

Another thing I REALLY like is something that we weren’t able to do in the legacy field service mobile interface: When a Field Tech clicks on the directions icon from the booking agenda, a pop-up opens asking the technician if they want to set the booking status to ‘traveling’ and open the map to show the turn-by-turn directions to the service location. The second option is to only open the map and to leave the status as is. The first time I tried this, the app even asked me which app I wanted to use: Apple Maps or Google Maps! Once I selected which map I wanted to use, it didn’t ask me again and kept using the map I selected prior.

New Booking UX

When you open a booking you’ll immediately notice the new interface. I love the crisp new look! You’ll automatically land on the ‘General’ tab, and notice there are a few more tabs you can review. The ‘General’ tab has been cleaned up and has limited work order details in the ‘Details’ section of the form. This makes the form feel a lot less cluttered. The columns that are shown here are: ‘Incident Type’, ‘Work Order Type’, ‘Service Address’, and ‘Summary’. Below the ‘Details’ section is the ‘Booking’ section with information related to the booking. The following columns are listed in the booking section: ‘Status’, ‘Arrival Time’, ‘End Time’, and ‘Duration’. The columns on the ‘Details’ section are read only, meaning none of the columns can be updated from here. The columns on the ‘booking’ section are editable and you’ll notice a large blue button on the bottom of the form with the text ‘Edit Status’ which allows for a quick update of the booking status. Note: Depending on data in other fields, you might see different things. I.E I noticed that if the customer asset column on the work order is populated, this column will also show on the new form.
The second tab on the form is called ‘Tasks’ and shows a list of the service tasks that are related to this work order. Above the task list you’ll notice a bar that shows the total number of service tasks, and how many of those tasks have been completed and are still open. When you click on any of the tasks, the legacy work order service task form will open.
Similar to tasks, the ‘Product’ tab shows a list of work order product that are associated with the work order. Field Techs can mark products as used, while clicking on a work order product will load the legacy work order product form. The same goes for the ‘Services’ tab, which shows a list of associated work order services. Lastly there is the ‘Timeline’ tab, which allows Field Techs to create notes with text and images for the booking. Keep in mind that these notes are associated to the booking, and not the work order.

New Mobile Views

The new mobile experience also impacts list views in the application, which can be configured and optimized by system admins. I noticed that any icons were removed from the views and that they can support up to 5 columns vs the old 3 columns we have in the legacy views. When navigating to a table view, it will always load the default view, as long as that view is also added to the Field Service Mobile app. If there’s no default view for the table you’re trying to access, the first view configured for the selected table will load instead. What I didn’t like was that I was unable to choose a different view. The view selector is not available in the new user interface!
NOTE: The rules are a bit different for the bookings table! As stated here, the list view used for bookings is an ‘agenda view’. When I looked at the views under the bookings table, I found the ‘Bookings – Agenda View’! I was able to configure this view to filter out bookings that don’t have a work order and add columns! Keep in mind that if you are testing the new mobile experience in an environment that has bookings that are NOT related to work orders, these will show up as blank lines in the bookings list view, hence I would recommend adding the filter mentioned above.

Conclusion

After testing out the new Dynamics 365 Field Service mobile experience I must say that I really like this new interface! It feels like this version has a lot less clutter than the current version of the mobile app and I think the new forms look very nice as well! As you might have guessed, my favorite part is the ability to update the booking status to ‘traveling’ when clicking on the ‘directions’ icon from either within the booking or the agenda view. 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!