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:

• 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:

• and we also have the XRMToolbox utility Auto Number Manager by Jonas Rapp for that (basically doing the same as the CDS field definition) already since 2017:

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.

Last Updated on July 17, 2019