Some Features of Field Service Lightning

Some Features of Field Service Lightning


We live in an era of advanced technologies that is changing from the standpoint of mobile computing, cloud computing, IoT and the other technologies.

We expect 58 connected devices to be used per person by 2022.

Our households already have whole lot of connected devices such as connected cameras, speakers and many more. This is what is changing the customer expectation in an entirely different way. Before we start discussing about the Field Service Lightning, let us first concentrate on What are the challenges faced by the Field Service Lightning Management ?

What are the Challenges of Field Service Lightning Management ?

The challenges for FSL are:

  1. The current systems are costly and suffers from inefficiency
  2. Solid teams and processes
  3. They lack in any form of mobile support
  4. Difficult to allocate the resources

This is where Field Service Lightning is launched on Service Cloud. “What is the purpose served ?”.

What is the Purpose Served ?

  • Field Service Lightning helps to connect with your employees on the field for an organization – all those technicians, dispatchers and the mobile resources on the field. These are the people who have a  360 degree customer view. Field service is about providing the connected service experience. Salesforce provides the connected service experience.
  • The scheduling engine in FSL is intelligent and has the ability to optimize the schedule of the mobile devices. You can manage all the attributes that you need to manage the schedules such as skill sets, calendars and the kind of work that is done by the technicians. FSL has the ability to match these works by modelling.
  • Accessibility to the customer data on everything that matters to them. So, that they can carry these devices for completion of the job – anywhere and anytime.

In this post we are going to discuss some of the standard features of Field Service Lightning. And we will further discuss the standard solution that are provided. Let us find “What are these standard features?”.

Some of the Standard Features of Field Service Lightning

These are :

  • Work Order Management
  • Resource Management
  • Schedule Management

Let us now gather some knowledge on each of these features of FSL.

Work Order Management

Work Orders are the tasks that has to be performed based on the requirements from the customer. FSL enables an automated work order scheduling. Each of these work orders are divided into the smallest of tasks. These smaller tasks are termed as Work Order Line Items.

Next, we have Field Service Appointment for a specific Work Order as well as Work Order line items. These are what contains information on schedules of various appointments.  

Resource Management

This comprises of the following:

Service Resources

These are all those service users who are using the FSL.  

Service Territories

This is nothing but the region in which Field Service Work are to be performed.

Schedule Management

Here we need to understand the concept of “What are Operating Hours?”.

The operating hours are defined to be the number of hours devoted by the service resources – in order to provide the services to the client. Next, we deal with our solution for the client which comprised of the following:

Solution for the Client

The solution comprised of

    • Create a Service Request
    • Create a Work Order
    • Dispatcher Console Screen

Creating a Service Resource

In order to create a Service Request in Salesforce we take the following steps:

Step # 1 : We need to choose a resource type say Technician for these service resource. We will have multiple appointments that are related to this particular service resource.  The service appointment refers to the actual booking for the FSL agent to go and perform the services on the field. You can allocate many services appointments to a single service resource. These appointments will have different schedule times. Here is screenshot that shows all these above details:

Step # 2 : Moreover the service resources will have different skill sets. Along with comes the service territory that is explained as the “American Region” as shown in the below screenshot.

Next, we come to the creation of the work order.

How to Create a Work Order ?

There are some of the related fields to the work order such as :

  1. Service Reports
  2. Products Consumed
  3. Products Required
  4. Work Order Line Items

 

  • Product required is the amount of product – for the work order completion. On the other hand the product consumed means that the product is already started and on top of this we have the work order line items.
  • Dispatcher Console Screen in FSL acts as the main workspace for the despatchers. It shows the appointments with the status as despatched or scheduled. This screen will also show the service resource and the service territory that he works in. When we click on the service resource the details of users are what we are provided with. The Gantt charts shows the upcoming appointments as well as the active members. We can also view the name of resource, resource type as well as the Gantt level and the description.
  • The related list field shows the skills, absences, service appointments – related all to the service resources.
  • The map field shows the location of the service appointments and the corresponding work orders.
  • The calendar field shows the time and the dates of a particular appointment.

Some Additional Features of FSL

Following are some more features of FSL which are included  in the Winter 19 Release Notes for Salesforce.

Colour coding of the Gantt

This is based on the service appointment field – creating custom, colored palettes in Gantt. This depicts different colors of work done. The service appointment fields can be of any type – checkbox, date-time, picklist and others. The appointments then can be displayed with a custom colored spectrum – based on the proximity of the due date.

Custom Actions to Dispatcher Console

Custom actions are now added to the Dispatcher Console. These custom actions runs on various records on the Dispatcher Console. This is done by running a Visualforce page or calling an Apex class. As an example we can cite assigning service appointments to various service resources.

Share Service Appointments and Work Orders

When a service request is assigned to a service appointment, then the appointment and its parent records are to be shared with the service resource.

Summary

The rapid pace at which technology is advancing in the form of cloud computing, IoT is changing the way customer expectations are emerging.

However, the existing systems lack in any form of mobile support and are costly as well as are not efficient. These are some of the challenges faced by Field Service Lightning.

Field Service Lightning in Salesforce will provide the connected service experience – for all your employees on the field such as the technicians 619 Roofing, dispatchers as well as the mobile resources on the field.

FSL has an intelligent engine that optimizes the mobile devices and gives the accessibility of customer data so that the devices can be carried by these employees to have the data – anytime and anywhere.

Reference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGCauDrpIYM

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/winter19/release-notes/rn_field_service_custom_actions.htm


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