Chapter 33. FieldOne

Field services are typically characterized (or described) as the people providing services out on the road or directly in front of customers or products. The “field” is the resources associated with these services; they can be the employees of the organization and the tools and equipment necessary to complete the services, which can be anything from repairing leased equipment owned by the organization (such as washing machines leased to apartment complexes or servicing parking meters for the city) where there is little or no direct customer interaction, to providing direct interaction with customers (such as providing plumbing services).

Field services also have other metrics of varying importance, including the following:

Tracking employees in the field

Routing employees, based on different conditions, such as these:

External factors (traffic, for example)

Priority

Escalation

Opportunity

Managing the resources, other than employees, which can include the following:

The physical equipment they are servicing

The tools necessary for the servicing

The vehicles necessary to get to the job

Capturing field notes, time, and costs

Invoicing for the servicing

Scheduling any follow-up activities

Receiving feedback related to the servicing

While there are typically integration components to an ERP system to capture some of this data (for example, the invoicing and related billing/collection), a majority of the other activities are conducted in a CRM system.

In July 2015, Microsoft acquired FieldOne for its field service management strategy and intellectual property and has integrated it into Dynamics CRM.

FieldOne Sky is a service cloud–based managed solution that integrates directly into Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a part of the xRM platform. It provides a set of tools that work as part of Dynamics CRM in helping to implement business processes for the installation of products, preventive maintenance, product returns, inventory consumption, and maintenance of service level agreements. FieldOne Sky works along with core Dynamics CRM entities, and it has its own custom entities as well.

To install FieldOne Sky, follow these steps:

1. Log on to https://portal.office.com using your Office 365 global administrator credentials and select Admin > CRM on the left, as shown in Figure 33.1. A new window opens, listing all your CRM Online instances (see Figure 33.2).

2. Select the CRM Online instance where you want to install FieldOne Sky solution and click the pencil icon to the right of Solutions to manage your solutions for the selected instance, as shown in Figure 33.2. As shown in Figure 33.3, all the Microsoft preferred solutions are now shown, as along with their status (for example, whether they are installed, whether they have an update available).

3. Select FieldOne Sky and click Install. The Terms of Service page, shown in Figure 33.4, appears.

Refer to CHAPTER 22, “Customizing the System,” for more information about solutions management.

4. Click the Install button to accept the FieldOne customer subscription agreement and begin the installation. The FieldOne Sky installation might take some time (in some cases up to an hour or longer). You can leave this page and come back to check the status, which will be shown on the right in yellow, as shown in Figure 33.5.

When FieldOne Sky is finished installing, the solution status column display Installed for the status, as shown in Figure 33.6.

5. Navigate to Dynamics CRM, and you see the new title FieldOne Sky in the navigation bar, as shown in Figure 33.7.

You can now either select FieldOne Sky from the navigation bar or navigate to Settings > Solutions and select the FieldOne Sky solution (see Figure 33.8). On this screen, you can also remove or modify the solution if necessary.

If you navigate to Settings > Security > Security Roles in Dynamics CRM, you can configure the FieldOne Sky security roles (see Figure 33.9). If you navigate to Settings > Security > Field Security Profiles in Dynamics CRM, you can configure the FieldOne Sky field security profiles (see Figure 33.10).

The security roles are as follows:

FieldOne Sky - Administrator—This role should be assigned to the user who will be responsible for managing the configuration of FieldOne Sky in Dynamics CRM, as it gives the user access to the entire FieldOne Sky Administration area and all FieldOne Sky entities.

FieldOne Sky - Dispatcher—This role should be assigned to the user who will be responsible for the following:

Managing resources

Work orders

Scheduling work orders

FieldOne Sky - Inventory Purchase—This security role should be assigned to users who will are responsible for the following:

Inventory

Purchase orders

RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization)

RTV (Return to Vendor)

FieldOne Sky - Resource—Resources are typically the field technicians who access FieldOne Sky using a mobile application.

If a user’s record is set up as a resource record, the address on the user record is used as the resource’s start and end location, and the Latitude and Longitude fields are updated automatically when the user address is updated in Office 365, as shown in Figure 33.11. (If your view doesn’t match what’s shown in Figure 33.11, be sure to change your form type to Information.)

FieldOne workflows use the email and phone number fields on the user record to send reminders and notifications about work orders to the resource.

FieldOne Settings—You can configure work order–related configurations here, such as prefix, status, and starting number. Similarly, you can set the prefix and start number for RMA, RTV, Agreement, and other entities.

Skill Types—You can add skill types related to your business here. These skill types are assigned to resources and incident types. Having skill types assigned helps in scheduling work orders with proper skilled resources.

Territories—Territories are used to define regions where sales and services are provided. Having them defined helps dispatchers in assigning work orders to field agents that are in or close to the territories of the account being serviced.

Products/Services—This is the out-of-the-box product entity (that is, native) from Dynamics CRM. You can define the cost and list prices of products and services offered by your business here, and that information will be consumed by FieldOne for servicing purposes.

Refer to CHAPTER 17, “Settings,” for more information about working with the product catalog.

Service Task Types—You can define various service task types and their estimated times to complete. This information is used for creating service tasks for work orders and help in estimating completion times for work orders.

Incident Types—Here you can define various types of incidents that customers can report. You can define associated service tasks and products with each incident type. When an incident type is associated with a work order, service tasks, products, and services are prepopulated from the incident type.

Resource Pay Types—You can define resource pay types here to help in calculating the resource cost.

Price Lists—This is the out-of-the-box Dynamics CRM entity to define different price lists for products and services.

Work Order Types—You can define different types of work orders to reflect different types of work the company offers—for example, installation, preventive maintenance, service call, and so on.

PO Types—Here you can define purchase order types.

Resource Categories—You can define categories to group resources, such as field manager, technician, operator, vehicle, and so on.

Resources—Here you can create multiple resources that will be working on work orders. A resource can be a company employee or a company asset.

Priorities—You can define work order priorities here. You can assign a different color for each priority that will be used to display on the Schedule Board.

Work Order Sub-statuses—You can define various work order sub-statuses for your organization’s processes.

Work Order Schedule Sub-statuses—You can define work order schedule sub-statuses according to your requirements. A work order can have more than one work order schedule.

Agreement Sub-statuses—You can define custom agreement sub-statuses, which can be used to specify current agreement status more precisely.

Warehouses—You can create company warehouse records here.

You can update the latitude and longitude of an account record by clicking ... > Geo Code, as shown in Figure 33.13.

When you select Geo Code, you see a pop-up window with a pin on a Bing map for the address, as shown in Figure 33.14. This helps you calculate travel time for a resource to reach the account location for a work order. In addition, if you change the form type to Information, the form also shows the latitude and longitude fields populated.

Service account

Location where the work needs to be performed

Description of the work

Priority and estimated duration

Skills required

Steps to perform the work

Products and services required

Open—Unscheduled

Open—Scheduled

Open—Completed

Closed—Posted

Closed—Cancelled

Agreement—An agreement can be used to automatically trigger the creation of work order for recurring work like preventive maintenance. Agreements can be scheduled to create work orders automatically at a predefined time interval.

Case—When there is an inbound call to the support team and the problem could not be resolved remotely, the support engineer on call can create one or more work orders to fix the problem from the case entity record. These are normally break or fix types of work orders.

Sales Order—When a sales order is processed and some installation needs to be done at the customer site, a work order can be created from the sales order.

Ad hoc work orders—This type of work order is normally created by field agents when they are at customer locations and find that some extra work needs to be performed.

When a work order is created, it can be populated with incidents, products and skills, location, and so on. When a work order has not yet been scheduled, no work order schedule record is created.

A work order can be scheduled in four ways:

A dispatcher can schedule it manually.

A field agent can schedule it using the FieldOne Sky mobile application.

A dispatcher can schedule using Schedule Assistant.

The routing engine can schedule it automatically.

When a work order is scheduled, a work schedule record is created. The work order status is then changed to Open—Scheduled and the work order schedule status is Scheduled.

There are six work order schedule statuses:

Scheduled

Traveling

In Progress

On Break

Completed

Cancelled

Changing the work order schedule status changes the work order status as shown in Table 33.1.

Field agents review the schedule and then may accept or decline a work order, and the work order status is scheduled. The work order schedule status may be accepted or declined, based on the field agent’s action on the work order.

You can find agreements by navigating to Settings > FieldOne Sky > Agreements, as shown in Figure 33.15.

To create a new agreement, click + New icon and provide the following details (see Figure 33.16):

Service Account—Select the account record where the work order will be worked.

Billing Account—This field is the location where invoices will be sent. It is populated automatically if the selected service account has a separate billing account; you can also select a different billing account.

Start Date and End Date—Select the start and end dates for the agreement. The duration is then populated automatically.

Service Level—This field is used to categorize agreements, and it can be configured in the Administration section of FieldOne Sky.

Price List—Select the price list for products and services that will be used in completing work orders for this agreement.

Territory—Select the territory where work orders will take place. This will help the routing engine and Schedule Assistant schedule work orders.

Auto Generate WO—If you want the system to generate work orders automatically, set the value to Yes. To have work orders created manually for each scheduled date, set it to No.

Generate WO Days in Advance—If you want work orders to be generated in advance of scheduled dates, provide the number of days. The default value is 7.

Auto Generate Schedule—If Auto Generate WO is set to Yes and you want to schedule the work orders automatically as well, set this value to Yes. When a work order is created, the system also schedules it by creating a work order schedule record. The work order schedule is displayed on the Schedule Board.

Preferred Resource—If Auto Generate Schedule is set to Yes, then specify the resource for the work order schedule here.

Preferred Start Time—Specify the preferred start time for the auto-generated work order schedule.

Work Order Type—Select from the options for the types available.

You can associate incidents, agreement service tasks, agreement products, and agreement services to the agreement schedule record. When work orders are generated, this information is passed on to those records that help the field agent to complete the work order. The work order summary, work order type and priority will also pass down to work orders generated from agreement schedule record.

Click Schedule Recurrence to specify dates and time intervals for work orders to be generated, as shown in Figure 33.18.

Automatic billing—The Agreement Invoice entity is used for automatic billing. Customers pay for the product in the system, and it is used for subscriptions, rental fees, and so on. Agreement invoice records are created at a set recurrence interval for a set price and are associated with agreement records.

Time of service billing—When a work order is completed and the status is changed to Closed—Posted, clients are invoiced for used services and products for that work order. This does not involve the Agreement Invoice entity but rather the standard work order invoice process.

When you hover over a work order on the Schedule Board, you see additional information about the work order, such as the work order number, service account name, work order summary, status, territory, and so on (see Figure 33.20). In addition, the color tells you the status of a work order.

To configure colors for the Schedule Board, navigate to FieldOne Sky > Administration > Work Order Schedule Sub-Statuses in Dynamics CRM and then make the changes you want to the screen shown in Figure 33.21.

The map view displays all the work orders (scheduled and unscheduled), as shown in Figure 33.22.

Gray pins indicate unscheduled work orders. A grid at the bottom of the Schedule Board displays the list of all unscheduled work orders. When you hover over any of the pins, you see details about the corresponding work order.

You can drag an unscheduled work order from the grid to the Schedule Board, as shown in Figure 33.23.

You can drag an unscheduled work order (gray pin) from map view to the Schedule Board.

You can block a slot in the Schedule Board by first selecting (clicking) and then dragging over the time slot using the mouse and then navigating the Look Up Record dialog that appears (see Figure 33.24). Here you can select a work order from the unscheduled work orders view.

Users can reassign and reschedule previously scheduled work orders by just dragging and dropping them on new time slots. To do this, right-click a scheduled work order to see all the actions you can perform with the work order schedule. You can change its status, get driving directions, and remove it from the Schedule Board. When you remove the work order schedule from the Schedule Board, the work order is displayed again as an unscheduled work order, as shown in Figure 33.25.

Schedule Assistant is an HTML web resource in FieldOne Sky, and it is divided into panes, as shown in Figure 33.27.

The left pane shows the constraints that are used to query the system to find available resources, while the middle pane shows the available resources and the proposed schedule slot.

You use Schedule Assistant to set the following constraints:

Time Constraint—This is automatically populated from the Primary Incident Type lookup field on the work order (the Primary Incident Type entity has a Scheduled Duration field). If the associated primary incident type record has that field populated, Available Duration is populated with that value. The default value for Available Duration is 1 minute.

Radius—You can specify the radius to considered for resource availability. You can set the units here to miles or kilometers.

Start and End Day—You can specify the date range for availability of resources.

Resources—If there is a preferred resource assigned for the work order, that resource is listed here. If there is no preferred resource specified for the work order, this constraint is not visible at all.

Territory—You can narrow down your search by selecting nearby territories.

Resource Types—You can specify what kind of resource types are required for the selected work order. The options available are User, Crew, Service Center, Company Asset, Account, and Contact.

Clicking Search Resources shows all resources available and time slots in the right pane of the Schedule Assistant. In addition, it displays the business unit name, start and end times, distance, and estimated travel time.

Select any time slot from the listed records, and the Schedule Slot pane opens. Here you can click Schedule & Close to create a work schedule record and close the window. Click Schedule & New to schedule multiple resources for the work order. You can click Map View of Scheduled Resources to see all resources on a map, and you can open up the Schedule Board to see scheduled work orders.

You can download the app, connect to your Dynamics CRM instance, and then follow these steps to log on to the FieldOne Sky mobile application:

1. Open the application on your device and then navigate to the Setup menu and click the Connect link next to CRM (see Figure 33.28).

2. Provide your Dynamics CRM login details and URL and click the refresh icon in the top-right corner (see Figure 33.29). Your device downloads the data and metadata for the app, as shown in Figure 33.30.

3. When the configurations, data, and metadata are finished downloading, you see a computer icon in the top-left corner, as shown in Figure 33.31. This indicate whether you are working offline or online. Tap the icon to connect as online.

Field agents can handle work order scheduling from the mobile application in the following three ways:

A field agent can schedule unscheduled work orders by using the list view.

A field agent can schedule unscheduled work orders by using the map view.

A field agent can reschedule a scheduled work order by changing the start date time and the end date time.

The following sections describes the steps involved in each of these methods.

1. In the FieldOne Sky mobile application, click the Work Orders menu and select the work order you would like to schedule.

2. Click the More menu at the lower left and select Resource Schedules, as shown in Figure 33.32. There isn’t a record if there hasn’t been a resource scheduled for this work order.

3. Click the + icon to create a work order schedule for the selected work order.

4. Select Schedule Sub-Status as Accepted and then select the Start Time and End Time. The app calculates and updates the Duration field on the work order schedule.

5. Click Resource to select a resource from the list and assign the work order to that resource.

6. Click the save icon in the top-right corner to save the record. The work order is now scheduled, as shown in Figure 33.33.

1. Go to Work Order Lists in the FieldOne Sky mobile application and click the Map View icon at the top.

2. The app displays all work orders on the map. Zoom into the map to find and choose a work order pin that you’d like to schedule (see Figure 33.34).

3. Click the pin to access the work order information. The app opens the work order record, and you can perform the steps described previously with the list view to schedule the work order.

1. Select a work order schedule from the main menu and click More at the bottom right of the screen.

2. Select Resource Schedules. The app shows resources scheduled (see Figure 33.35).

3. Click a record to see the work order information.

4. Change the start date time and end date time and click the save icon.

There are two ways to use the Woodford solution:

Download the solution and import it into your Dynamics CRM instance. This method is recommended and provides single sign-on.

Download the application on your computer and use it from there. With this method, you have to provide your credentials every time you try to use it.

The Woodford solution allows you to customize the app by adding custom entities and fields, designing views and forms, configuring dashboards, creating different versions of the app for different user roles, and more. You do not need to worry about different device platforms, as any changes made are deployed to all mobile devices, regardless of platform.

To configure the Woodford solution, follow these steps:

1. Log on to Dynamics CRM where the FieldOne Sky solution is installed by navigating to Settings > Solutions and then opening the FieldOneSkye_base solution.

2. Click Configuration in the left navigation pane and then click the Download Resco Woodford Solution link to save the managed solution file on your computer (see Figure 33.36).

3. Close the FieldOneSky_base solution and click the Import button on the solution home page to import the Woodford solution, as shown in Figure 33.37.

4. When the solution is imported successfully, refresh your browser and navigate to Settings. There you should see a Mobile CRM area with a Woodford tile, as shown in Figure 33.38.

5. Click the Woodford tile, and you see the MobileCRM Woodford link, as shown in Figure 33.39.

6. Select the MobileCRM Woodford configuration link, and you may be prompted to install Silverlight if it is not installed on your computer. Do that if needed. Then provide your details for registration and download the metadata from your Dynamics CRM instance.

7. Configure the app by either starting from scratch or using a template. To download a template from the FieldOneSky_base solution, navigate back to the FieldOne Sky solution and from the configuration page (where you downloaded the Resco Woodford Solution), click Download Sky Woodford Project (see Figure 33.40).

8. After the zip file downloads to your computer, extract the file to a folder, and you see a file with the extension .woodford.

9. Go to back to the Woodford application, click the Import button at the top, and select the .woodford file you just downloaded. As shown in Figure 33.41, the Add Mobile Project dialog opens, and in it you need to provide the following details:

Type—Standard User

Name—YourCompanyName FieldOne Sky Woodford

Priority—10

Roles—Select all FieldOne Sky security roles

Now, your Woodford solution is ready to configure the FieldOne Sky mobile app. The following sections describe some of the key configuration changes to consider.

By selecting a device and then clicking Edit at the top, you can perform the following functions (as shown in Figure 33.43):

Lock the application

Wipe the application

Do a full sync on a specific device

To define a new security policy, click the New Policy button and then define the session expiration time, when to lock the application, and when to wipe data from application. Select the device and then click Edit to change the policy for the device from the default to the newly created policy.

The project opens in a new tab, and the left navigation pane provides options for configuring Mobile entities, views, forms, fields, and dashboards.

Select Home to see all entities in the Home pane that will be available on the user’s home page in the mobile application. The right pane, titled Available Entities, shows entities that can be added to the home screen. Entities that are enabled for use on the mobile app are displayed in both panes. You can add and remove an by selecting it and then clicking Remove or Add at the top. For this example, if you do not want the Lead entity to be displayed on the mobile app, you select it and click Remove. The Lead entity is then moved to the Available Items list (see Figure 33.45).

If you scroll down through the entities in the left navigation pane, you see some entities grayed out. To enable one of these entities, select it and click Enable at top of the form, as shown in Figure 33.46.

The Sync Filter button in the navigation bar defines the information that can be sent to the mobile device from Dynamics CRM. There is already a sync filter defined in the project template for the Account entity, so if you select the Account entity and click the Sync Filter button, you see the conditions defined for Account entity records, as shown in Figure 33.47. You can modify these conditions to meet any specific requirement your organization might have.

You can define which fields and permissions will be available on the mobile application for specific fields. However, you cannot override any CRM security that might already exist (though you can further restrict, if required). Select the Account entity in the left navigation pane and then expand it. You can see the menu items Forms, Views, Charts, Fields, and Indexes for that entity, as shown in Figure 33.48.

Select Fields from the left navigation pane to see all the fields enabled for mobile in the right pane. The fields that are highlighted and for those that have a check box are available in the mobile application. You can select a grayed out field like Account Number and click the check box in front of it, and you can also define the field permissions (Read, Create, Update) in the right pane. After making required changes, click the Save button (see Figure 33.49).

Selecting Forms under the Account entity in the left navigation pane allows you to edit the available forms. To modify a form, follow these steps:

1. Open the default form of type Edit Form to make modifications to the default form (see Figure 33.50).

2. Click the Add Field button and from the list of the available fields, click Account Number to add it to the end of the form (see Figure 33.51). You can drag and drop the field to any position on the form.

3. Click Save and Close to save the changes and close the form.

4. Click the Validate button to make sure the changes are valid for the project (see Figure 33.52).

5. Click the Publish All button to push the changes to the mobile devices of users.

6. Log on to the FieldOne Sky mobile application and click the refresh icon to synchronize the configuration, metadata, and data changes. When the app asks you to sync the changes from server, click Sync to get latest updates (see Figure 33.53).

7. Navigate to Account, open any account record, and click the Edit icon to open the edit form. You can see that the Account Number field has been added to the Account entity form on the mobile application, as shown in Figure 33.54.

You can make many more significant customizations by using the Woodford application, including bringing in the Schedule Assistant to the mobile application, creating custom commands, and adding mobile form rules.