How To Setup Field Service In Salesforce

Maintaining and coordinating a large team in real-time can appear to be a relatively easy task. Legacy tools don’t offer the flexibility and purpose that success-oriented businesses require. That’s where Salesforce Field Service comes into the picture. 

Salesforce Field Service is a powerful and highly customizable set of features that offers efficient, intelligent, and personalized services from the mobile phone to the field on a single platform. It is the mobile solution part of the Salesforce Service Cloud that enables you to collaborate in real-time with or without an internet connection. 

With Salesforce Field Service, you can create and track work orders, appointments, resources, inventory, support, promotions, and more right from your smartphone.

Why Is Salesforce Field Service Important?

With Field Service in Salesforce, companies can create work orders on a case-by-case basis and manage work orders instantly and efficiently. Also, work orders integrate with accounts, contacts, assets, cases, rights, and other objects so you can download data across Salesforce.

It is imperative for companies that provide onsite services to their customers to be aware of each situation of their Service Resources/Technicians. For example, the current location of the technician, whether the service resource has that particular item available or not, and the current status of the service appointment. 

The main parts of Salesforce Field Service fall into the following categories: core features, managed package, and mobile app, which are available in Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer edition.

Key Players Of Salesforce Field Service

• Administrator
• Agent
• Dispatcher
• Mobile Worker/Technician

The flow gets started with the Admin, who configures the field service according to the organization’s needs. Agents create work orders when they receive a call from a customer and request a work appointment via a work order listing the required skills and parts. The dispatcher schedules appointments and ensures that those with the right skills carry the right parts in the right location. 

Mobile Workers manage their service appointments, and after completing the service appointments, the mobile resource/technician completes work orders, tracks parts used during service, and provides service reports.

Key Objects Of Salesforce Field Service 

1. Service Territories – Regions where services are provided or the territory where Mobile workers are available.
2. Operating Hours – Time when the field service operations can be performed for service territories, service resources, and customers.
3. Service Resources – Mobile workers/technicians/workers who perform field service work at customer locations.
4. Skills – Skills needed to perform field service tasks associated with the mobile worker and the work type.
5. Work Types – Defines the work type, including Television installation, Router installation, Chimney installation, etc. 

6. Work Orders – Customer raise requests for field service work. It stores the information of all the work to be done.
7. Service Appointments – Appointments for field service work with details of the work order.
8. Maintenance Plans – It uses automatically generated work orders to track preventive maintenance work.
9. Product Items – Represents the parts that can be requested, required, transferred, and consumed in field service work during service.
10. Product Requests – It stores all the requests for a part or parts for a particular work order.
11. Product Consumed – It stores the product consumed for a given work order.
12. Time Sheets – Tools to track the time your field service employees spend on tasks.
13. Product Transfers – Transfers of inventory between locations.
14. Return Orders – Records of inventory returns or repairs.
15. Service Report Templates – A customer-oriented report template that summarizes the status of service appointments and work orders.

Steps To Setup Salesforce Field Service

Step 1: Enable Field Service

1. Go to Setup  -> Search Field Service in Quick Find Box -> Enable Field Service.

2. After enabling the Field Service, it will appear like this.

3. Set Auto-Created Service Appointments and sharing.

Note: Auto-created Service Appointments will set the due date field of the service appointment to a specified number of days after the created date.

-> When selecting Share dispatched service appointments with their assigned resources, it will give the mobile users permission to access Service Appointments.

-> When selecting Share service appointments’ parent work orders with their assigned resources, it will give the mobile users permission to access Work orders of that Service Appointments.

Step 2: Install the Field Service Package using this link: https://fsl.secure.force.com/install.

1. Click Install in Production or Sandbox according to the requirement. It will redirect to the login page.

2. Now select Install for all users and click Install.

Just wait for some time, and you will receive an e-mail once installed. You can also check it in Installed packages inside your Salesforce org.

After installation, we have to create Permission sets and create Service Territories, Work types and skills, Operating hours, Dispatchers and Agents, Service Resource, etc. 

To create all these, we will use a Guided setup.

1. In-app launcher, search for Field Service Admin.

2. Click the Permission Sets tab of Getting started; click create permissions in each tile.

Note: After creating Permission sets, assign Field Service Admin Permissions permission set to a user. E.g., An user with a System Administrator profile.

Similarly, An user must have a Dispatcher license to use the Dispatcher console.

3. In getting started, Click the Go To Guided Setup and follow these steps:

Step 1: Create Service Territories and fill all the fields

Step 2: Create Work Types and skill requirements

Step 3: Create Service Resources (Create a new user before creating a service resource) and make sure to assign it a mobile license. 

Step 4: Create Dispatchers, Agents, and similarly create Customize Appointment Booking and Customize Scheduling Policies.

Now, As soon as the call comes in from the customer end, the agent will create a work order directly from the case detail page (Add Work order to the related list of Case). A service appointment will automatically be created after creating the work order. (make sure to fill Work type and a Service territory)

Now, Open Field service from App launcher. You will be able to see all service appointments in the dispatcher console. Click on an appointment and then schedule it. The scheduled appointment will be visible on the Gantt chart.

The Mobile Resource/Technician can now see the Service appointments on their Smartphone, and the technician can visit the place for service. When the service procedure ends, the technician will take confirmation from the customer by digital signature (available in the Field service app), generate the report, and sync it with the system to track each service.

Conclusion

Salesforce Field Service is a powerful tool designed to deliver personalized customer experience and produce and operate an end-to-end solution with an enhanced customer experience and optimized service operations at lower costs.

Get in touch with our certified Salesforce Field Service experts to explore how Field Service allows businesses to deliver intelligent, fast & timely, personalized, and effective on-site services to their customers. Contact the world’s leading Salesforce consulting company now!