Guidelines for Creating Service Appointments for Field Service
A service appointment tracks field service work to be performed for a customer, and is typically associated with a work order or work order line item. Learn how to create and manage service appointments. A service appointment represents a visit with a timeframe for a specific type of work at a designated location. The service appointment is typically associated with a work order or work order line item, representing the broader job. Learn how to create and manage service appointments.
Required Editions
| Available in: both Salesforce Classic (not available in all orgs) and Lightning Experience |
| The Agentforce Field Service and Operations core features, managed package, and mobile app are available in Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions. |
- View Service Appointments
- View service appointments in the following places:
- Service Appointments tab
- Service Appointments related list on work orders, work order line items, or service resources
- Classic Dispatch Console
- Create Service Appointments
- You can create service Appointments in several ways. We recommend creating service
appointments by first creating a work order with an associated work type and then creating and scheduling the
appointment by using Get Candidates or Book Appointments on the
Work Order page layout, or by associating a Work Type to the Work Order with
Auto-Create Service Appointment selected.
Use Cases
I WANT TO… HOW DO I DO THIS? PERSONA Manually create service appointments, for example, create and schedule a visit for a customer directly from an inbound phone call. Create a Work Order record representing the job to be performed for the customer. Associate this record with a Work Type and select Auto-Create Service Appointment to create a child service appointment when a work order or work order line item is created from the work type.
You can then use Get Candidates or Book Appointments Visualforce actions available on the Work Order page layout to schedule the appointment.
- Call center rep
- Dispatcher
Create bulk Service Appointment records, for example, create unscheduled maintenance work. Use maintenance plans to create service appointments based on given intervals and criteria.
You can then use mass (bulk) schedule or optimization to schedule the service appointments.
- Admin
- Dispatcher
Create pre-planned work, for example, work coming from an external system that needs to be scheduled. Use Data Loader to import records.
Create service appointments using an Apex class that an external system can call through a web service so that service appointments can be created through integration.
You can then use mass (bulk) schedule or optimization to schedule the service appointments. Or use Get Candidates or Book Appointments Visualforce actions available on the Work Order page layout to schedule each appointment individually.
- Admin
- Dispatcher
Create Service Appointment records based on a certain scenario or required criteria. Use automation tools, such as Flow, or programmatic processes such as an Apex trigger and Apex class to create records based on your business logic. - Admin
Note On the Service Appointments related list on a service resource record, you can’t create appointments, but you can assign the resource to existing appointments. - Delete Service Appointments
- If an appointment is canceled, you can delete the appointment or change its status to Canceled. Deleting a parent record, like a work order, deletes its child service appointments.
- Associate Service Appointments with Other Records
- Service appointments always have a parent record, which can be a work order, work
order line item, opportunity, account, or asset. The parent record tells you about the
nature of the service appointment:
- Service appointments associated with work orders and work order line items offer a more detailed view of the work being performed. In addition, this association enables you to use more of the Field Service provided scheduling logic, such as skill requirements, resource preferences, and other entities that are available only when a work order or work order line item is used. We recommend you use the work order or work order line item as the parent record for a service appointment. If necessary, associate assets and accounts to the work order or work order line item through related fields and lists, instead of making assets and accounts the service appointment parent record. While work orders and work order line items let you enter general information about a task, service appointments track scheduling and ownership. If you select Auto-Create Service Appointment on a work type, a child service appointment is added to all work orders or work order line items that use the work type. In scheduling and optimization, service appointments are scheduled according to your settings.
