All posts by ManuelGR

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Consultant Speciality: Field Service

New Auto-numbering for Field Service

Inspired by this blog article from Karuna Karan I activated the new auto numbering for field service in a new trial organisation.

This is done by going to Field Service Settings and than click a ribbon button “Opt-In to Auto-Numbering”:

You than are than getting this warning dialog from Microsoft:

Opt-In to Auto-Numbering

By proceeding you will be opting-in to an improved implementation of Auto-Numbering utilized by several Field Service entities.

Benefits

  • Guaranteed unique record naming.
  • Fewer gaps in the names of affected entities since the name of the record is not generated until after a user creates it.
  • Starting number for names can be changed to a smaller number should the maximum number be reached.
  • Number length for names can be specified on a per entity basis.

Changes

  • The Auto-Number name will only be assigned after the record is saved.
  • Configuring each name’s format will be managed in a dialog.
  • When importing an entity as a separate solution from one organization to another, the Auto-Numbering format definition for the entity will be carried across as part of the solution.

Warnings

  • Once opted-in, reverting back to the legacy implementation of Auto-Numbering is not possible.
  • While opting-in, creation of new records may fail. It is highly advised that opting-in take place while there is no activity on the organization. The process will take a few moments to complete.

After you confirm this warning to proceed, the former button turns into this one:

When using that new ribbon button a dialog opens:

and you can choose there between those entities for which you could already decide about auto number format before:

Conclusion

Yes, an easy way to exactly archive what Microsoft mentions in the confirmation dialog:

  • guaranteed unique (biggest enhancement)
  • fewer gaps between the numbers
  • number length can be specified
  • usage of not utilized numbers when switching to smaller starting position

So thank you Microsoft for that.

However:

  • as Karuna Karan mentioned in his blog, it is still difficult to reset the already used numbers
  • it still has other format than the “old” auto numbers:
Common dynamics CRM auto numbers (OOB).
  • we do already have other means by using web.powerapps.com to create auto numbers OOB in a much more flexible way and add them into our solution files:
auto number functionality of web.powerapps.com
Auto number functionality of web.powerapps.com.
Auto Number Manager in XRM Toolbox.

So you’re asking yourself a bit why for Field Service OOB auto numbers there seem to be only some “minor” enhancements whereas the overall auto numbering has made such huge progress.

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Activate CE Field Mappings in Field Service Mobile

Say you add the Contact subgrid into your Account form on Field Service Mobile because you’re expecting your Field Agents to also capture new Contacts and they are first searching for the Account first instead of adding the Contacts directly from Home=>Contacts.

Now if you tab on “+” at the top of the Contacts subgrid on the Account form the “New” form for Contacts opens.

And now the difference here is: if you leave the setting from below in its standard configuration as it comes out of the box, your address fields will stay empty so that for the new Contact you have to fill everything in manually.

But if you change the setting “Use Entity & Attribute Map” to “true”, the address fields on a new Contact form are automatically populated from the same fields on the Account form were you had started your journey.

Resco Field Mapping
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Embed Forms Pro Survey into Field Service Mobile

Here is a nice article by Thomas Dayman that gives a short overview of how to embed a Survey Questionnaire created with the new Microsoft Forms Pro into the Field Service Mobile app.
The approach is to create an Offline HTML file where Thomas provides a sample code snippet for, and embed that via iFrame into a Form in Woodford.

Compared to Resco’s new Inspections the Forms Pro integration doesn’t support offline scenarios. Resco Inspections comes with additional licence cost whereas for Forms Pro it is still not clear how the licencing will look like.

Microsoft Forms Pro embedded in Field Service Mobile
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Overview Microsoft Field Service

The main process for Field Service spans the following entities, more or less also in this order:

  • Cases
  • Work Order
  • Work Order Incidents
  • Customer Assets
  • Resources
  • Resource Requirements
  • Resource Bookings
  • Invoices

There are over a hundred other entities around that involved in the core Field Service processes which provide additional functionality.

Data Model

Data model of the Work Order and its most important related entities

AddOns and extensibility solutions for D365 Field Service

Also there are plenty of Add Ons available that can extend the core Field Service functionality, like:

  • Field Service Mobile
  • Connected Field Service (now part of the core Field Service Solution)
  • PowerBI
  • Field Service (Partner) Portal
  • Data Integrator Templates
  • Microsoft Forms Pro
  • Azure IoT Hub
  • Azure IoT Central
  • Azure Stream Analytics
  • Azure Machine Learning
  • Azure Digital Twins
  • Dynamics 365 Remote Assist (for Hololens and Andoid Mobile Phone)
  • Microsoft Hololens
  • Dynamics 365 Product Visualize
  • Dynamics 365 Guides (3D instructions for Field Service Engineers)
  • Dynamics 365 Layout
  • Microsoft Intune (Mobile Device Management / Mobile Application Management)
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