Create Service Appointments for Field Service

Service appointments can be added to work orders, work order line items, opportunities, leads, accounts, or assets. However, associating service appointments with work orders or work order line items allows you to use Field Service mobile and Field Service scheduling logic that’s available only when a work order or work order line item is used.

You can create Service Appointments in any of these ways.

• Manually create service appointments by creating a work order with an associated work type. To generate a child service appointment when a work order or work order line item is created from the work type, make sure that Auto-Create Service Appointment is selected.
• Create service appointment records in bulk based on given intervals and criteria by using maintenance plans.
• Create preplanned work by using Data Loader to import records.
• Create service appointment records based on your business logic for a certain scenario or criteria by using automation tools, such as Flow, or programmatic processes such as an Apex Trigger and Apex Class.

You can create a Service Appointment record from the Service Appointments tab (by selecting New Service Appointment) or from the Service Appointments related list on a record (by clicking New), and then manually populate it. However, creating a service appointment without scheduling isn't recommended, as the appointment isn’t accounted for in terms of capacity and utilization until it's scheduled. We recommend you create Work Order records and have service appointments automatically created by the system only when a scheduled visit to the customer is necessary. You can do so 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 enabled.

Note When creating an appointment, define any important SLAs or constraints that can impact the scheduling of the appointment. For example, define Skill Requirements on the work order to ensure that the job is assigned to a qualified service resource, define an Early Start and Due Date on the appointment to ensure the job is scheduled within the proper time-frame SLA. And, define an address that is properly geocoded to a valid geolocation to ensure travel time is accurately calculated when scheduling. All of these details determine whether the appointment can be scheduled, when the appointment can able to be scheduled, to which service resource, and other factors.

Note

• In the Gantt, service appointments are labeled using their appointment number. To customize a service appointment's label, fill in the Gantt Label field on the appointment record.
• If an assignment is made during scheduling or optimization—Field Service managed package features—assigned resource records are automatically created.
• If an appointment has more than one assigned resource, only the first created assigned resource is recognized in scheduling and in the Classic Dispatch Console. However, if the appointment is assigned to a service resource of type Crew, assigned resource records are auto-created for the crew members, and the assignment details are displayed correctly in the Classic Dispatch Console.

When the mobile worker completes the appointment, have them fill out the Actual Times section to indicate when the appointment started and ended. In addition, they can enter the minutes it took to travel to the appointment in the Actual Travel Time field on their assigned resource record. This information is helpful for auditing and auditing and reporting purposes after the work is completed. In addition, mobile workers can enter the minutes it took to travel to the appointment in the Actual Travel Time field on their assigned resource record.