Connecting to your D365 Field Service instance from Field service mobile app

If you are trying to connect to you Field service instance using the FS mobile app you need to first setup the Field service mobile configuration tool (a.k.a. woodford) , install the Default base mobile template project and then derive a customizations project which would hold your Mobile customizations.

This can be setup following the guide on Microsoft docs:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-engagement/field-service/install-field-service

But even after following the guide if you try connecting to FS mobile, you may end up getting few errors.

Your organization has not created a Bookable Resource for your account and set it to be “Enabled for Field service Mobile”

The issue here is that if you want to access FS mobile app, your user account should have a corresponding Bookable Resource with “Enabled for Field service Mobile” flag checked.

Here I have created a Bookable resource and enabled it for FS mobile:

Once you setup the Bookable resource, try to connect to FS mobile app again, you may get another error message:

Your organization needs to configure Field Service Mobile. There may not be a published mobile project or the mobile project is not configured for a security role assigned to you.

If you remember while setting up the FS Mobile project in woodford, the project was enabled for Field Service related Security roles, you need to make sure the User trying to login to the FS mobile app has at least one of those security roles. Once you give FS related security role to the user you should be able to access FS mobile app.

Happy Field servicing 🙂

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Not able to see Requirement groups on the schedule board – Dynamics 365 Field service

If you are working with Requirement groups and want to schedule them using the schedule board and not able to find them on the board, you are at the right place.

Resource requirements don’t appear on the Schedule board by default, it has to be configured from the Schedule board settings area.

Let’s see how to do it:

If you see the default Schedule board, there’s no view configured for Requirement groups. Click on the Schedule board settings icon:

Go to Requirement Panels settings area:

Add a view by selecting View type = Requirement Group

You should now see another view for scheduling Resource Requirements

How to restrict bookings in Dynamics 365 Field service to only be scheduled at start of an hour

One of our customers had a requirement where they want a booking to be scheduled only at the start of an hour i.e. a booking can be scheduled at 2PM or 3PM but not at 2:30 PM.

On searching for a solution, we found out a very easy OOB solution which is called Time resolution.

It’s a setting on the schedule board which allows the booking to be created in an interval of minutes (1 to 60). Once we set this to 60, the User would just see 1PM, 2PM etc while dragging and dropping the Resource requirement on the schedule board.

Now this is going to just restrict the booking when dragged and dropped on the schedule board.

We also created booking rules to put some additional checks which work on the schedule board and finally a plugin on create of a booking which takes care if booking is created manually.

Cannot find Scheduling settings for Field Service in the new UCI app

I recently installed Field service in a new Trial instance to play with the new UCI interface and the Microsoft Field Service Mobile app.

There’s definitely a learning curve moving from standard UI which has Field services related menu items in the same sitemap but with the new Field service version, Field service related entities can only be accessed from the UCI app. See below screenshot on how to access the APP:

Now, once you click on the app, you can change the area from the bottom in order to configure FS (the Settings area)

I think it’s more confusing if you have used Field service 7.x with standard UI. Once you browse the settings area, you will quickly realize that the Scheduling settings like Scheduling parameters (to enable maps) are missing. The FS settings area looks like this:

In order to access scheduling related configuration settings, there’s another App called (Universal Resource Scheduling) which now sits outside Field services and can be accessed in the following manner:

Once you are in the Universal Resource Scheduling app, you can access the Settings area from the “change Area” dropdown at the bottom and then you will see all Scheduling related configuration settings.

Hope it helped 🙂

How to upgrade your Tenant from Field service 7.x to 8.x (UCI Client)

I recently tried upgrading FS for one of my customer’s tenant but couldn’t see an option to upgrade to the latest 8.x from the administrative portal.

Asked the same question to the product team and gladly they shared the process customers can follow to do this.

To Opt-in please perform the following steps:

1. Access the Dynamics Insider Portal here: http://experience.dynamics.com/insider
2. Log in with your Insider credentials.
3. On the Insider home page, search for a program with the name “Opt-in to Upgrade Project and Field Service – Unified Interface.”
4. Click that program link in the search results and choose to “Join Now” in the page that opens. This will add you as a participant to the program.
5. On the program page, access the link provided to sign up:  “Signup Link to opt-in for the latest Field & Project Service UCI Release (GA)”
6. The link will open a simple questionnaire and one of the questions is the instance URL; please provide the URL of the instance.
7. Microsoft will receive the details you provide and, within a few days, will enable the install or upgrade of the latest versions of Field and Project Service on the instance that you provided. Once enabled, you will receive a confirmation email from Microsoft.
8. Once you receive the email, you can access your Dynamics 365 Admin portal to install or upgrade Field Service and/or Project Service Automation on the enabled instance.
9. For any questions and discussion on the functionality, please use the Forum on the program page. Use the Microsoft Support process to log any issues/bugs.
10. If the identified instance has both Field and Project Service installed, please plan to upgrade both solutions before resuming normal use of the instance.
11. For a smooth install experience, please make sure that the identified instance meets all the prerequisites listed on the Insider Program page.
12. These releases of Field and Project Service will only be available for install or upgrade on the identified instances. They will not show up for any other orgs, even if they are on the same tenant.

Resco Field service mobile app – Error loading woodford solution – CRM metadata failed to refresh

If you are trying to make any customizations to the Resco Field service Mobile app, you would encounter few strange issues at times which can block development.

Note: In case you are unaware, the silverlight based woodford solution just works in IE(Tested in IE11) and that too in non-incognito mode i.e. if you are working in incognito mode, the solution will fail to load.

Also many times the solution gets loaded but towards the end it gives you error saying CRM metadata failed to refresh and then all you can access is your Profile tab (and other non dev related tabs).

I haven’t been able to find a solution to the above problem except for restarting IE again, seems like a caching issue.

How to sync Resource Bookings in Field service with MS Outlook

A very basic Field service use case is that bookings should show as appointments in MS outlook so that users can keep track of bookings and other office tasks in one single view.

Fortunately this is configurable in D365 FS, however there are few prerequisites:

• Dynamics 365 Field Service licenses
• Office 365 Enterprise E3 licenses

Here are the steps to enable synchronization of bookings with User’s calendar:

1.1.1.1       To be done by Dynamics 365 Administrator

• From the main menu, click Settings -> Administration.
• Click System Settings -> Synchronization.
• Under Select whether to enable syncing of resource booking with, check the Synchronize resource booking with Outlook.

 

 

1.1.1.2       To be done by each User(Bookable Resource)

• Click the Settings button in the upper-right corner of the screen.
• Click Options and then Synchronization tab.

 

• Under Resource booking sync with Outlook, check the Synchronization resource booking with Outlook.