Get Ready for Field Service Scheduling and Optimization

This is a Field Service managed package feature.

Watch the video to see how to optimize scheduling using the innovative new engine, built for greater scalability, precision, schedule quality, and performance alongside some new features such as Travel Modes, Holiday Management, and Service Appointment Sliding.

Watch the video to see how you can benefit from improved schedule quality using the innovative new engine available by default for new users as of Summer ’23, and easily transitioned to by existing users, for all territories. The video covers additional supported features and the new offsite service appointment feature.

• What’s Schedule Optimization?
  Manually constructing an efficient field service schedule can drive even the most serene administrator to madness. Field Service optimization transforms traditional scheduling by automatically generating the ideal schedule based on your specific constraints and priorities. Field Service offers unparalleled flexibility and innovative, out-of-the-box solutions, enabling businesses of all types and sizes to tailor their organizational models for seamless schedule optimization.
• How Does the Field Service Optimization Engine Work?
  Need a few contractors onsite a week from now and need to know who’s available? Absolutely have to have a specialist arrive to a service location in an hour? What about a regularly scheduled appointment for both the contractors and the specialist to service the same location?
• Get Started with Schedule Automation and Optimization in Field Service
  Field Service provides several tools for automating and optimizing your workforce’s schedule. Learn about the benefits and differences of each method, when to use each tool, and how to set up schedule automation and optimization.
• Adopt and Implement Field Service Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization
  Field Service’s Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization replaces the optimization functionality and associated manual and semiautomatic scheduling services you’ve been using. The new architecture and services are more efficient and improve scalability, performance, and schedule quality. Built on the Hyperforce platform, Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization hosts innovative new functionality to take Salesforce Field Service to the next level. Learn more about setting up optimization and creating optimization jobs, explore optimization metrics, and get scheduling recommendations. Start your journey to Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization, with resources for every step of your way.
• Transition to Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization
  Salesforce orgs created in Summer ’23 and later have Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization enabled by default for all service territories. If you're not using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization, you can enable the enhanced engine for all or selected service territories. You can easily upgrade all service territories with guided steps comprising a readiness check and links to Salesforce Help. This transparency helps you adopt Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization and benefit from innovative features, more efficient services, and improved scalability, performance, and schedule quality.
• Activate Field Service Schedule Optimization
  Configure optimization so you can schedule appointments and address last-minute challenges. You can set up optimization to run automatically, or run it manually. Activate optimization to create an optimization user and profile required for accessing a optimization services. When you’re using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization, this activation isn't required, because Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization uses a Platform Integration User.
• Create the Field Service Integration Permission Set
  Create or update the Field Service Integration permission set to access the object attributes. The Field Service Integration permission set lets users manage permissions needed for optimization and scheduling services related to Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization and service appointment bundling.
• Customize the Service Appointment Workflow
  The Field Service service appointment workflow shows the sequence of stages that a service appointment passes through. It starts when the appointment is created and ends when it reaches its final status.
• Customize Derivation Settings
  Use derivations to map the fields on standard objects to fields required for scheduling, including the Address and Service Territory (where), start and end times (when), Scheduling Policy (how), and Work Type (what).
• Customize Appointment Booking Settings
  Users can schedule service appointments for a work order, work order line item, or other record by using the Book Appointment Chatter action. Customize this scheduling experience from the Field Service Admin app.
• Set Up Routing for Travel Time Calculations
  Salesforce Field Service routing calculates travel times to determine the best route for mobile workers traveling to service appointments. This way, your team can work efficiently and maintain service levels. Accurate routing is essential for optimal scheduling because it provides more accurate travel time predictions so that mobile workers can complete more jobs in less time. This improved accuracy reduces travel costs and improves customer satisfaction by ensuring timely arrivals.
• Configure Travel Time Buffers
  Add a buffer to travel time to account for additional travel-related activities such as parking, security checks, on-site navigation to better schedule your workforce. Configure travel time buffers at the org, service territory, or individual service appointment level to improve the precision of your scheduling operations.
• Set Up Sliding and Reshuffling for Scheduling and Appointment Booking
  Free up time for scheduling more appointments when using Field Service appointment booking and scheduling. With sliding, service appointments on the Gantt can move to an earlier or later time, within the resource’s availability for the same shift. By using reshuffling and sliding together, service appointments on the Gantt can also move to a different day or to a different resource. Reshuffling and sliding service appointments provide more time slot availability and faster SLA compliance and enable the scheduling of longer service appointments by reducing white spaces.
• Set Up Travel Modes
  Optimization services with different travel modes enhance predictive travel by providing more accurate travel time predictions and improving the completion rate of service appointments. By leveraging different types of travel modes, admins define the travel mode per territory, per primary service territory member, or both, to reflect transportation type (car, light truck, heavy truck, bicycle, or walking), the use of toll roads, and hazmat considerations.
• Create and Manage Field Service Scheduling Policies
  Scheduling policies in Salesforce Field Service define the rules and objectives (scheduling priorities) for assigning work to service resources. These policies optimize resource allocation by considering factors such as resource skills, job proximity, and urgency, to make sure the right person is assigned to the right job efficiently. By considering scheduling preferences such as minimizing travel time, scheduling as early as possible, and prioritizing preferred resources, scheduling policies improve operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
• Create and Manage Field Service Work Rules
  Work rules refine the list of candidates for a service appointment by rejecting service resources that violate any rule. Add work rules to any Field Service scheduling policy to guide schedule optimization.
• Manage Rule Validation Checks
  Set how often rules are checked for violations, and what triggers automatic rule validation checks.
• Get Rule Violation Analytics for Field Service (Beta)
  Understand the root causes of rule violations in manual scheduling, such as geographical imbalances or skill gaps, and make data-driven decisions by analyzing trends and patterns.
• Create and Manage Field Service Objectives
  Represent your KPIs and scheduling goals by adding service objectives to your scheduling policy. You can weight each objective in the scheduling policy to indicate its importance to your business needs, relative to other objectives.
• Optimize Field Service Appointments by Using Priorities
  When your team’s availability is limited, prioritize critical service appointments over less pressing work. You can assign dynamic priorities, such as values that increase as due dates approach. Optimization can consider priority values when it schedules appointments to time slots.
• Create Relevance Groups
  Use relevance groups to apply work rules and service objectives to certain groups of appointments or service territory members. You can apply different logic based on types of work and service resources within one scheduling policy. For example, use relevance groups to enforce your company policy on breaks and travel time for full-time versus part-time employees. Relevance groups can also use data insights from across your Salesforce org to improve scheduling. For example, use relevance groups to prioritize technicians with specific skills for high-priority accounts, or assign resources based on asset criticality or customer sentiment.
• Fix Overlaps by Using an Automated Scheduling Flow (Beta)
  Tackle Field Service scheduling challenges with an automated flow that addresses and fixes schedule overlaps that occur due to an appointment ending late. Use the flow template recommendations or adjust the template to suit your specific use case. Fix Schedule Overlaps flow (Beta) is available only when you're using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization.
• Create Scheduling Recipes for Common Events
  Tackle common Field Service scheduling challenges with simple optimization “recipes” that address what happens to your schedule after appointment cancellations, time changes, and overlaps. Cover all scenarios by creating multiple recipes for each category.
• Field Service Scheduling and Optimization Services
  Scheduling and optimization includes services used to schedule, reschedule, and unschedule service appointments.
• Manage Optimization Conflicts
  Enhance operational stability and reduce your optimization partial completion rate by preventing optimization conflicts when multiple optimization requests are made simultaneously on the same dataset. For example, prevent two users from creating optimization requests simultaneously for the same territory and horizon. Also configure what happens when schedule changes are made while optimization is running, for example, if a new job is automatically scheduled or a dispatcher reschedules a job while optimization is running.
• Reserve Time Slots for Designated Types of Work
  Create specific time slots in Field Service dedicated to service appointments that meet your criteria.
• Enable Multiday Field Service Appointments
  Some Field Service industries have service appointments that span multiple days, for example, utility infrastructure repairs and installations. With multiday service appointments you can schedule service appointments that span resources' nonavailability without rule violations.
• Manage Work Capacity in Field Service
  Control the work performed by your workforce according to dynamic company priorities. 
• What’s Available in Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization
  Review some highlights of the Field Service Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization engine.
• Enable Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization
  Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization must be enabled to start using its features. As of Summer ’23, new Salesforce orgs have Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization enabled by default for all service territories. Existing orgs can opt in and enable the enhanced engine for all or selected service territories. The enhanced engine is an improvement of the optimization functionality and associated manual and semiautomatic scheduling services you’ve been using. The enhanced architecture and services are more efficient and improve scalability, performance, and schedule quality. Make sure you examine the Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization considerations and limitations before using the enhanced engine.
• Set Up Enhanced Optimization for Field Service Territories
  As of Summer ’23 new Salesforce orgs have Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization enabled for all service territories. Existing orgs can switch to use Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization for all service territories or per territory. Enhanced Optimization per Territory enables you to deploy Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization only on selected territories, for example, territories with simpler scheduling scenarios. This gradual rollout lets you keep the more complex scheduling scenarios for later releases, when all the service territory features are supported.
• Set Up Optimization of Large Field Service Datasets with Dynamic Scaling
  Manage large-scale global and in-day optimization effectively without splitting data due to system limits. Dynamic scaling intelligently structures data into logical clusters, seamlessly balancing demand and capacity while accounting for operational work rule constraints. This capability simplifies optimization management by enabling higher system limits, so you can optimize your entire dataset in one smooth operation. You don’t need to manually define optimization groups and boundaries. Dynamic scaling unifies and streamlines the optimization process, creating a single, cohesive solution that prevents conflicts and overlaps. Dynamic scaling is available only when you’re using Enhanced Scheduling and Optimization.
• Field Service Scheduling and Optimization Solutions
  Salesforce Field Service is used by a wide variety of customers across many industries. The tasks and activities that you do can vary significantly depending on your industry, business model, and service operations model. At Salesforce, we relate your core business objectives, needs, and user workflows to a job you need to do. The jobs framework helps us understand what customers want to achieve by focusing on their needs and how the product or service can address them. The use cases identify the core job, large or small, that a user must perform, solve, or complete to succeed. Review the different use cases, understand what industries they're most common in, and learn about the scheduling and optimization features and solutions Field Service offers to solve them.