MB2-718 Certification: (Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service) – Field Service, Agreements

February 24, 2018

As I revise for the MB2-718 exam (Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service) I’m creating blog posts detailing all aspects of my revision. I hope these posts will aid anyone who is also revising for this exam. In this post I will cover Field Service Agreements.

Agreements are often used for preventative maintenance as they support recurring jobs for a set period of time using an agreement schedule. For example: A quarterly inspection over a two-year contract. Work orders, bookings and invoices can all be automatically generated from the agreement.

Each agreement can have multiple booking setups, then each booking setup will have one or more associated incidents types. Work orders and resource bookings can then be automatically generated for each agreement booking setup based on its incident types. (And any other service / products added to the booking setup.)

Each agreement booking setup has a recurrence, very much like a recurring appointment in your Outlook calendar. Each booking setup is then associated with one or more incident types, services, products and service tasks. (in a very similar manner as you’d expect on a work order!)

In addition to a booking setup, each agreement can also optionally have an invoice setup. Each invoice setup contains one or more invoice products. Both the agreement booking setup and the agreement invoice schedule can have a recurrence. You may (for example) have an annual agreement to service a piece of equipment weekly but will invoice on a monthly basis.

Agreements start off in as “Estimate” state whilst they are being build, they then become “active” once ready and once past the end date the agreement status will change to expired. (Plus if required agreements can also be cancelled.)

You can think about the process for creating an agreement as being in four parts;

Part one – Creation of the agreement header. (Account details, duration, price list etc)

Part two – creation of the agreement booking setup

Part three – Definition of the work to be completed

strong>Part four – Invoice Setups

To access agreement, load the agreements option from the Field Service navigation menu.

Part One – Agreement Header

When you create an agreement the “header” of the agreement looks like this; below I will explain the meaning of each field.

Field	Description
Agreement number	The agreement number is a read only field, it is automatically calculated by the system when the agreement is saved. And uses the settings you configured in Field Service settings to decide the prefix and next number.
Service and billing account	The service account is the account who will receive the serviced outlined in this agreement. The billing account is the account that will pay for the work. (if the billing account is blank then the service account will be the billing account.)
System status	Agreements start with a status of “Estimate”, become “active” and then progress to “Expired” when the end date is reached. Alternatively, agreements can be set to cancelled if they are terminated. Tip: Typically, the status of an agreement will be estimate whilst it is being created. But don’t forget to change it too active once ready.
Sub status	The sub status is an option user configurable status field that can be used to give more granular detail about the status of the agreement, if required.
Description	A text field describing the agreement.
Owner	The owner of the agreement, typically the person who created the agreement.
Start Date	The date the agreement started.
End Date	The date the agreement ends.
Duration	The length of the agreement. The duration is automatically calculated based on the start / end of the agreement. Alternatively, you can enter just a start date and enter a duration. This will calculate the agreement end date.
Agreement Details	A second text field to further describe the details of the agreement.
Originating Agreement	If this agreement has been created from another agreement, then this field will link back to the original. Typically, this will be populated when the copy / renew option is used. As you might want to copy an expired agreement and re-activate as part of a renewal process.
Price list	The price list is mandatory and important; this will be the source for all prices applied on work orders associated with this agreement.
Service Territory	An optional field describing the geographical area this agreement covers.
Currency	The currency that will be used for all work orders / invoices associated with this agreement.
Taxable	Is sales tax to be applied to work orders associated with this agreement is applicable?

Note: Optionally agreements can also be related to opportunities or quotes, making then fully part of your sales cycle if required.

Part Two –Booking Setup

Having saved the agreement foundation, you will next create the booking setup(s). Later these will be used to decide what work orders to generate when.

Tip:
Notice that the agreement has a business process flow designed to help you define each part of the agreement in a logical order.

Section	Field	Description
Summary	Name	A text name describing the agreement schedule
	Owner	The owner of the schedule, typically the same as the agreement owner.
	Agreement	The number of the related agreement.
	Description	A detailed description of the schedule.
Work Order Settings	Auto Generate WO	Set to Yes, if work orders are to be automatically generated.
	Work Order Type	When work orders are generated, either automatically or manually against this agreement this field will define their type.
	Generate WO days in advance	Work orders can be generated “n” days in advance of their required date. Setting this value high could create a large number of work orders but it needs to be set high enough to ensure that work orders are generated far enough in advance to allow the dispatcher time to schedule.
	Priority	A user defined field to indicate the priority of the work orders.
	Work Order Summary	A text description giving a summary of the work which is added to the work orders.
Booking Settings	Auto generate booking	If the work order is automatically generated, then optionally a schedule can also be generated. If set to No, a work order will be generated but its status will be “Open – unscheduled”, it can then be scheduled by the dispatcher. Either manually or by using the scheduling assistant. If set to Yes, the work order will be automatically scheduled using the settings / preferences below.
	Schedule duration	The amount of time to schedule for the job.
	Pre and post schedule flexibility	How many days pre (and post) of the proposed start date that can be allowed for flexibility.
Preferences	Preferred Resource	A mandatory field if the work order is going to be automatically scheduled. Otherwise optional, implying the dispatcher will select the resource when the work order is scheduled.
	Time window start & end	The time window the job could start.
	Preferred start time	The preferred start time.

Having entered and saved the booking setup detail, you can now define the booking recurrence. Using the ribbon button “BOOKING RECURRENCE”.

The recurrence pattern can be daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. And / or specific custom dates can also be entered. Meaning the flexibility available for the recurrence pattern is extremely high.

Part three – Definition of the work to be completed

The next step will be to define the work that needs to be completed. Typically, this will involve adding one or more incident types to the agreement. Assuming you are already familiar with creating work orders this should be a straight forward task.

When adding the incident types, you can also optionally associate the incident with a specific customer asset. This allows service records to be maintained to specific pieces of customer equipment.

You can also optionally, add specific service tasks, products and services directly to the agreement.

Once the agreement has been activated one (or more) booking dates will be created. The status of each date will change to “Processed” when a corresponding work order is created.

Tip:
The agreement booking dates are created via workflow in background. I have noticed that it can take some time for the required dates and work orders to be created. So you may need to be patient.

If you opted to not create work orders (or you just can’t wait), opening the booking dates will give you access to a button to generate the work order.

Part Four – Invoice Setups

Each agreement can have one or more invoice setups. I guess you can think of them as working in a very similar way as to a booking setup. But instead of being used to generate a work order they generate invoices. Like the booking setup once you have created the invoice setup using the ribbon recurrence button to define when and how often the invoice should be generated.

I hope this post has given you a good overview of agreements as part of your revision for the MB2-718 exam. As always I encourage you to not reply on just theory, get some hands on time with the product experimenting with the different options around agreements.