I recently completed a simple but effective alteration in Field Service for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the requirement was to be able to see if a field agent was in a risky situation or might need assistance.

Imagine you have someone onsite who is working alone, maybe they are about to enter a confined space, work on a ladder or operate a seriously dangerous piece of equipment.

In these circumstances it might be useful for the dispatcher back in the office to be able to see this on the schedule board and also to be alerted if the engineer has stayed in this state longer than expected. As maybe they need assistance. (Possibly urgently.)

To complete this change followed these simple steps;

1. Create custom booking status for at risk.
   
2. Create custom booking status for assistance required.
   
3. Create workflow to change from “at risk” to assistance required after “n” minutes.
   
4. Create workflow to send a notification if status has been set to “assistance required”.
   

Step One – Create a custom booking status for at risk.

First of all, I wanted a status that the engineer would select in the mobile application if they felt they were entering a risky situation. You do this from the “Booking Statuses” option in the administration area of Field Service.

In my simple example I had just one status but I guess you could create different booking status codes for different risks if required.

Below you can see a work order on my schedule board and that the dispatcher should (hopefully) notice the nice pink colour.

Step Two – Create a custom booking status for assistance required.

Next I created a second similar booking status for assistance required.

TIP: When I first created these booking statuses I could immediately select them in my mobile application but doing so gave me an error.

To resolve this, you simply have to sync the latest data in the mobile application. Using the sync icon shown below.

Step Three – Create workflow to change from “at risk” to assistance required after “n” minutes.

Next I created a very simple workflow that will wait for “n” minutes after the engineer has put themselves into the “at risk” state. If after that time, they have changed their status then something could be wrong and we will automatically escalate their status to “assistance required”.

Below you can see my workflow. I chose to escalate the status after 30 minutes. You may need a shorter or longer delay depending on your specific situation.

The entity for the workflow is “Bookable Resource Booking” and it is set to run in background.

The workflow is set to start whenever the booking status changes.

The workflow steps are pretty simple. Firstly, a condition to check the status is “at risk”, then a timeout. After the workflow has waited the status is checked again. And if the field agent’s status is still showing as “at risk”, I simply update the status.

Meaning if the workflow changes the status the booking on my schedule board will change to red. Hopefully prompting the dispatcher to take some action.

Step Four – Create workflow to send a notification if status has been set to “assistance required”.

Finally, I created a second workflow to send out a notification. In this simple example my notification was just an email. But other options such as sending a text message might be required. Plus, you might notify multiple people! Such as the dispatcher, the field agent and maybe the customer.

This workflow is very simple. Again it is from the “Bookable Resource Booking” entity. And it starts whenever the booking status changes.

It then simply sends an email if the status of the booking has become “In Progress – Assistance Required”

This is a simple change and one you will have no problem in copying and improving. I hope it has given you some ideas on how you might handle risky situations. J