Considerations for Appointment Scheduling in Automotive Cloud

• When you assign the Automotive Scheduler permission set to internal users, or the Automotive Scheduler for Experience Cloud permission set to external users, make sure you only provide Read access on Service Appointment.

  If you provide Edit access on Service Appointment to users, and the user modifies key attributes such as the Arrival Window Start and End Times or the Scheduled Start and End Times, the application doesn’t validate the availability of resources. There are chances of data corruption and conflicting appointments.

  When you assign a custom permission set and assign it to users who are modeled as technician service resources, provide Read access on Service Appointment.

• You must create the named credential with Label and API name as AUTOSCHEDULER because the predefined omniscripts use this exact name as a parameter.
• Automotive Scheduler includes asset scheduling. If you have the Automotive Scheduler permission, you can schedule an unlimited number of assets, such as vehicles for test drives.
• Set up service resources with resource type as Technician. The predefined Omniscript-based flows for Automotive Scheduler don’t work when you create service resources of type Agent. You can customize the predefined Integration Procedures, DataRaptors, and Omniscripts to accept service resource inputs in the flow of types other than Technician.
• The Automotive Scheduler predefined Omniscript-based flows use the Service Territories connect API to fetch the list of service territories for a specific work type group. The API by default only returns the top 25 search results sorted by name in an ascending order. To increase this limit, modify the AutomotiveSchedulerGetLocations integration procedure. Increase the limit parameter in the Properties tab for the GetServiceTerritories API from 25 to our desired number. To avoid performance issues, we recommend you set a limit below 1000.
• The following fields are autopopulated on a Service Appointment record when you create an appointment using one of the two predefined flows
  • Appointment Number
  • Earliest Start Permitted
  • Due Date
  • Parent Record
  • Parent Record Type
  • Duration
  • Duration Type
  • Subject
  • Work Type
  • Address
  • Status
  • Status Category
  • Arrival Window Start
  • Arrival Window End
  • Scheduled Start
  • Scheduled End
• If you specify Appointment Type as Video on a work type, the corresponding Appointment Type field on a Service Appointment record isn’t autopopulated by default. Customize the predefined Integration Procedures, DataRaptors, and Omniscripts to autopopulate the appointment type for a scheduled service appointment

• When you schedule a test drive, you first select a vehicle and then a sales rep. The next screen where you select a time slot, shows all the slots based on the combined availability of the vehicle and the technician.

  But it’s possible that the vehicle isn’t available on the day when the sales rep is next available. In such a scenario, you see the error message that asks you to select a different date or a different service resource.

  For example, the asset Neo Luxe V19 is available from Tuesday to Saturday from 8 AM to 9 PM. The sales rep Rosen Smith is available from Monday to Saturday from 8 AM to 9 PM. The user opens the test drive appointment scheduling flow at 9 AM Sunday and first selects Neo Luxe V19 as the test drive vehicle. He then selects Rosen Smith as the technician but the next availability date for Rosen is displayed as 9 AM Monday. The time slot selection screen won’t show any available slots for Monday because Neo Luxe V19 is unavailable on Monday. So, the user can either select Tuesday on the calendar to see the combined time slots of the vehicle and technician, or go back and select a different technician.

• The Parent Record and Parent Record Type fields on Service Appointment establish the context of an appointment.

  • For a test drive appointment, the parent record type is Lead or Opportunity, and the parent record is the specific lead or opportunity page from where the appointment is created.

  • For a vehicle service appointment, the parent record type is Asset and the parent record is the parent asset of the vehicle page from where the appointment is created.

• If there are no time slots available for a service resource associated with the dealer’s territory for 30 days from the current date, the resource won’t be available for selection in the appointment scheduling flows.
• When you add the Service Territory lookup to the Business Profile record page layout, make sure you also set the default visibility of the field as either Read-Only or Visible for each user profile as necessary.
• The appointment scheduling flows don’t cache the values you select on each screen, such as the dealer location, the vehicle, the service representative, and the time slot. So, if you click Previous on any of the screens without modifying your previous choices, there can be some delay in displaying and loading the pages.
• If you turn on the Enable Operating Hours for Service Territory Members for Work Type Groups setting, review the How Work Types, Work Type Groups, and Service Territories Work Together topic to understand how operating hours should be set up for service territories, work types, and service resources.
• To set up virtual appointments using the Bring-Your-Own-Application (BYOA) model and Amazon Chime, see Set Up Video Appointments with Amazon Chime.
• To understand how the Salesforce Scheduler APIs calculate available time sots, see How Salesforce Scheduler Determines Available Time Slots.

Available Time Slots

There are multiple time slots that are shown while scheduling a service or test drive appoinment in the 'Select Date and Time' step. There is a known issue that causes some time slots from this step to disappear when navigating through the dates which is caused due to probable unavailability of the service resource vehicle on certain dates.

To resolve this issue so that the unavailable slots don't show up in the 'Select Date and Time' step, implement the new time slot selection.

Launch Omnistudio and complete these steps.

• Clone the TimeSlotSelection flexcard.
• In the Setup tab of the new flexcard, add a new mapping to the input map.
• Select VehicleResourceId for the key and {Parent.VehicleResourceId} for the value.
• Click Save and Fetch.
• Save and activate the flexcard.
• Go to Omniscripts and create a new version of the ServiceAppointmentTimeSlotSelection Omniscript.
• For the SelectDateAndTimeSlot step, select the TimeSlotSelection (Custom Lightning Web Component) and change the Lightning Web Component Name to the newly cloned flexcard which you activated.
• Activate this version of the omniscript.
• Create a new version of the AutomotiveSchedulerTestDriveAppointment Omniscript and activate it.