Characteristic Based Scheduling

Apart from planning the schedules based on the client availability and frequency of visits, the Auto Scheduling feature enables a user to schedule based on Resource Characteristics as well.

Suppose Percy is a field rep who works for an Air Conditioning Brand. He excels in diagnosing complex electrical and mechanical faults for HVAC systems. If a work order is generated for a persistent fan control problem, the Manager would want Percy, who is specialized in the diagnostic skill to be assigned to this work order rather than any other nearby field rep. The skills of all the reps are updated as ‘Characteristics’ within the CRM and the same can be leveraged for efficient scheduling.

Incidents and characteristics can be added to a work order within Dynamics Field Service.

To schedule work orders based on characteristics, Go to Maplytics Settings >> Maplytics Configurations >> Auto Scheduling Tab and enable the ‘Enable Characteristic Based Scheduling’ checkbox.

Once enabled, the characteristics of the resources will also be considered while scheduling appointments. A field rep could have multiple characteristics and the work orders requiring one of those skills could be assigned to them. So, if Percy is skilled with diagnosis as well as Performance Evaluation, he could be assigned to those work orders as well.