In this post I aim to continue my series covering all aspects of FieldOne Sky for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, work orders are the primary entity within FieldOne sky. Think of them as the “essence” of all information needed complete a service request.

In this post I specifically cover these questions on work orders;

• What are they?
• What is the work order life cycle?
• How do work orders relate to other FieldOne entities?

It is important to appreciate the information in this post before continuing to configure FieldOne Sky as you’ll need to understand these base concepts to be able to appreciate the implications of any configuration work.

Work Orders – What are they?

A work order is used to coordinate and schedule resources and activities. The work orders can be for differing types of work including installations, repairs or preventative maintenance. (The types can be configured to reflect whatever services a particular organization performs.)

A work order can contain;

• A description of issue or work to be completed
• Customer details include service and billing accounts
• Equipment affected
• Location
• Parts and services needed
• Tasks to follow
• Priority and estimated duration
• Skills required to complete the work order

What is the work order life cycle?

A work order will have a lifecycle in that they are created, scheduled, Dispatched, Serviced, Review / Approval, invoiced (& inventory adjusted)

Creation

Work orders can be created in four ways.

1. From an agreement, this might be an on-going contract involving regular service visits for preventative maintenance.
2. From a case, a case might be created in the contact center. If the case can’t be resolved locally and a field engineer is required, then work order(s) can be created directly from the case.
3. From a sales order, this would typically be because an installation is required that is related to the order.
4. Manually directly within the FieldOne Sky options in CRM or from the FieldOne Sky Mobile application.

When a work order is created its status is initially “Open Unscheduled”.

Scheduled

After a work order has been created it can then be scheduled to a resource. A work order can be schedules in four ways;

1. Manually by a dispatcher from the FieldOne Sky schedule board.
2. Manually by a field agent from the FieldOne Sky mobile application.
3. By a dispatcher using the scheduling assistant within FieldOne Sky for CRM.
4. By using FieldOne Sky routing engine to automatically schedule.

Once a work order schedule is created the status on the work order changes to “Open Scheduled”.

One work order can have many schedules, as a separate schedule will be created for each resource needed on a work order.

Dispatched

After a work order schedule has been created a specific resource will be dispatched.

Once assigned to a resource (field agent), the field agent will be notified and they can accept or reject the work order schedule.

When dispatched the work orders retains the status of “Open Scheduled” but the work order schedule is changes to be scheduled, accepted or declined.

Note: You can also create customer work order schedule status values beyond the defaults of schedules, accepted or declined.

Serviced

This stage reflects the processes that would happen whilst the work order is in progress. Such as on route, in progess etc.

The work order status changes from “Open Scheduled” to “Open Complete” once the service has been completed.

Review / Approval

After the service has been completed a manager or the dispatcher will review the work order and confirm the required services have been correctly completed and all the information correctly entered.

Once reviewed the work order status changes to “Closed – Posted”. From this point onwards the work order cannot be changed.

invoiced (& inventory adjusted)

Finally, FieldOne will automatically create any invoices required and adjust inventory.

Optionally parts used can be logged against as customer a “customer equipment”. Useful scheduling future maintenance work.

How do work orders relate to other FieldOne entities?

Below is a summary of the key relationships between a work order and the other FieldOne entities.

• Each work order will have one service account and one billing account.
• Each work order will have one or many work order schedule records.
• Each work order will have a resource. A resource is anything that needs to be scheduled. This could be a person, crew or piece of equipment

Each work order can be assigned an incident type. The incident entity is used to “bundle together all the products, services, service tasks and skill types needed to complete that incident. Using incidents to bundle these items like this makes the process of creating work orders much easier. Meaning the use of incidents isn’t mandatory with FieldOne Sky but they are recommended.

The last group if entities, work order type, priority and territory are used mainly for information purposes,