Schedule Emergency Appointments
In Field Service, swiftly schedule, dispatch, and track emergency appointments with the help of a real-time map view. The Emergency Chatter action on a service appointment shows a map view of your closest field resources so that you can dispatch work immediately.
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. |
This is a Field Service managed package feature.
Schedule an Emergency Appointment
- From any standard or custom object record, click the Emergency action in the Chatter feed. If you don’t see the action, ask your admin to add it to the page layout.
- Select a work type, address, and service territory, and click Emergency
Dispatch to generate a list of available service resources and display a map of
your team. Click a resource on the map to see:
- Their route to the emergency service and ETA.
- The data (breadcrumb) that their location is based on. The Last known location validity field in the emergency booking settings controls the location logic.
- A Dispatch button, which assigns the appointment to them.
- If you’re having trouble finding a candidate, select a different scheduling policy directly on the map or modify your emergency booking settings.
- If you want a candidate to complete their current appointment before heading to the emergency appointment, change the dispatcher setting on the map from “as soon as possible” to “after current Service Appointment”. Changing this setting updates the candidates’ ETA.
- Click Candidates to view a list of all candidates organized by ETA. Hover over a resource name in the list to see options to dispatch them or view them on the map.
- Quickly spot emergency appointments in the Gantt by looking for the lightning icon.
Customize Emergency Booking Settings
From the App Launcher, find and open the Field Service Admin app, and then click Field Service Settings. Then, click Global Actions | Emergency Wizard.
| Setting Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Emergency scheduling policy | The default policy that is used to find resources to assign to an emergency appointment. We recommend using an Easy policy with softer rules to ensure that more candidates are returned. |
| Last known location validity | The number of minutes after which a data breadcrumb—like resource location or geolocation—is no longer valid. For example, if the breadcrumb validity is 20 minutes and the Last Known Location of resource X was last updated 30 minutes prior, the emergency dispatcher calculates the resource’s ETA based on the location of the last appointment they completed, or (if no appointments were completed that day) their home base. The home base is the resource’s service territory member address, or if not applicable, their service territory address. |
Ideal availability grade Good availability grade |
The grading of candidates, which is color-coded. In the breadcrumbs example:
|
| Emergency search timeframe | The amount of time you have to resolve the emergency, not counting the appointment duration. The Earliest Start Permitted on the appointment is set to the current time, and the Due Date is the current time + appointment duration + Emergency Search Timeframe. For example, if an appointment requires 1 hour of work and the Emergency Search Timeframe is 360 minutes (6 hours), the emergency wizard shows only resources who can travel to and complete the task in the next 7 hours. |
| Allow Chatter post | In an emergency appointment dispatch, the dispatcher is shown the option to make a custom Chatter post or not post at all. If this option isn’t selected, no Chatter post is made. |
| Emergency Chatter Post Destination | Choose whether the Chatter post notifying the assigned resource about the appointment is added to the appointment’s feed or its parent record’s feed. |
| Pin After Dispatch | Pin the appointment after it is dispatched. |
Considerations and Limitations
Review these limitations and considerations.
- Emergency Dispatch uses the service resource’s Last Known Location to calculate the appointment’s travel time as long as it is within the Last known location validity time frame. Travel time to the appointment is calculated using Real-Time Travel (provided by Google) and the schedule is based on this travel time. After you dispatch an appointment the ETA is updated according to the last service appointment location, or according to the resource’s home base (if no appointments are scheduled on that day before the Emergency appointment). Travel time is calculated using the travel time calculation preferences set in the Routing section of Field Service Settings (aerial, SLR, predictive travel, or point-to-point predictive routing).
- Emergency service appointments don’t consider status transitions when their status is changed to any status in the Dispatched status category.
- The Emergency Chatter action doesn't support multiday service appointments, bundled service appointments, or service appointments with a scheduling dependency.
- The emergency wizard shows a maximum of 25 candidates.
