If you’re going to enable another (custom or OOB) entity for scheduling there is a great blog series from Sara Lagerquist (see links below) which has some good tips. Based on these tips I’m listing up some of the most valuable insights when it comes to extend URS functionality when you Enable Resource Scheduling for Entities.
don’t create new relationships from within the “Enable Scheduling” setup wizard as they won’t contain your custom prefix in their technical relationship names
think about doing a more sophisticated field mapping by Workflow instead of only using the static field mapping from the wizard
also take into account to leverage the standard field mappings for the newly created relationships to pass on additional parameters which are not exposed as fields in the wizard
don’t forget to maybe auto create Resource Requirements by another Workflow
also you maybe want to auto-populate Resource Requirement Skills / Characteristics for your new Resource Requirements
for only a limited number of Characteristics you might want to create several new Lookup fields on your newly schedulable entity to the Characteristic entity
for a larger number of Characteristics you could use Microsoft Flow to populate them into your Requirement Characteristic entity. Source for this Characteristics list to be picked up by Flow could be a new sub-entity from your newly schedulable entity (NewSchedulableEntity 1:n NewSchedulableEntity.Characteristics). If you want to make Service Tasks schedulable you could alternatively use the Service Task Type and place a new Subgrid “Service Task Type Caracteristics” there.
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:
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.
Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Stuff – mainly Field Service, Customizing and Nonprofits
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