The time off requests feature of Field Service for Microsoft Dynamics CRM gives the ability to allow the field engineer to request time off. It is great that the engineers can book holidays, we all love holidays! But the most important thing is for this to be taken into account whilst scheduling work orders. In this post I’ll explain how this simple feature operates.

In the mobile application the field agent can use the time off requests option to view and enter holiday requests. (Or log when they are sick, on a training day, lazy etc.)

Tip:
FieldOne Sky used to also include a reason for the absence. This doesn’t seem to be present anymore. (At least not out of the box!)

Having selected the time off requests option I can enter the start and end time of the time off request. (Note, I also entered my name in the resource field. It didn’t default!)

Having saved the time off request, as you can see below I am still available for work on that day. As my request needs to be authorised.

To authorise time of requests you use the “Time Off Requests” option that is accessible from the Field Service area. I guess you’d play around with security roles so only certain managers can approve these.

In the time off request option it is a simple task to select the request that needs to be approved and select the “APPROVE” button.

Now when I view the schedule board you can see that my working time is shaded out as I’m not available. (I’ve probably gone fishing or something exciting like that!) I will also no longer be a suggested resource in the schedule assistant on that day. Hopefully this means my fishing trip won’t be disturbed and customers won’t be let down.

Tip: You can make it so that time off is instantly shown on the schedule board with needing the authorisation step. This is done on the bookable resource option in Field Service. On each resource you will find an option called “Time Off Approval Required”, changing this to “No” will remove the need for authorisation.

Also, on the resource if you look at their work hours, the “holiday” time is shown as a red bar. Notice that I am off from 9am until 5pm. But as my shift is was due to run until 7pm therefore I am shown as working for the last two hours. (As I didn’t request that time!)

Tip:
Time zones. Make sure the correct time zone is selected on the resource and in user options in CRM. I had one set to “Greenwich Mean Time” and one set to “Coordinated Universal Time”. I managed to get all of my times out of sync by 1 hour due to daylight saving times in UK. Lucky setting them both the same value did fix everything!

As you can see time off requests are pretty easy to operate in Field Service. I did like the time off request reason that used to be present in FieldOne, so I’m pretty confident that I will be make a customization change soon to reinstate that! J